Over the last 25 years major changes have occurred across the Western developed world, in areas which lie at the intersection between demography and prevailing forms of living arrangements. Marriage rates have fallen; divorce and cohabitation rates have risen. Women are having fewer children, later in life, and there has been a marked rise in childbearing outside marriage at almost all ages. Migration is now a more important source of differences in regional populations than are variations in either births or deaths.

These changes have significance for economic and social behaviour and policy that goes far beyond individual families or households. New patterns of partnership formation and dissolution, and the partly associated new patterns of parenthood, have short-term implications for housing demand and income support services, and probable longer-term consequences for labour force participation rates and for the provision of support for the elderly. Ageing populations and shifts in patterns of childbearing and household mobility all influence the availability of help from relatives and friends, the need for supporting health and social services, and the possibilities for rejuvenation of inner city areas.

The purpose of the ESRC-funded Research Programme on Population and Household Change is to improve markedly our understanding of this set of complex, interrelated issues. The Programme is concerned with the causes and consequences of recent changes in the population structure of the United Kingdom. It has a particular focus on household and living arrangements in general, as well as a comparative perspective and an orientation towards the enlightenment of policy formulation.

The research projects examine the causes and consequences of change at four overlapping levels:

• the demographic context

• the structure of family, household and living arrangements

• individual life-courses and their interrelationships

• wider kinship networks