Anton Kuijsten, born in Waalwijk, the Netherlands, in 1944. Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. Professor of Demography at the University of Amsterdam and Director of the Netherlands Graduate School of Research in Demography.
Fellow (1 September 1996 – 30 June 1997)
During my stay at NIAS I continued work on my project “Changing Household and Family Structures in Europe: Trends, Theory and Outlook for the Future”. The project tries to find answers to the questions of what are the most relevant postwar trends in European household and family structures, how these trends can be explained with the help of an integrated theoretical framework derived from existing scattered theoretical notions, and how this could establish firmer ground for hypothesis making on household and family trends in the next two decades.
The underlying hypothesis is that, notwithstanding notable between-country parallelisms in macro-demographic trends, long-standing cultural endowments will prevent full convergence of developments in household and family structures. Pluralisation of living arrangements as a trend is omnipresent in present-day Europe, but its concrete manifestation differs from country to country.
Most of my time at NIAS was spent on collecting, analysing and visualising postwar census data on most of the current European countries. At the same time, theoretical and country-specific literature was read and electronically archived in chapter drafts for a book, and two other publications on closely related topics were finalised.