The immigrant family: cultural legacies and cultural changes

"This article examines the way family and kinship patterns change in the process of immigration--and why. Offering an interpretative synthesis, it emphasizes the way first generation immigrants to the United States fuse together the old and new to create a new kind of family life. The family is seen as a place where there is a dynamic interplay between structure, culture, and agency. New immigrant family patterns are shaped by cultural meanings and social practices immigrants bring with them from their home countries as well as social, economic and cultural forces in the United States."

[Family, fertility, and income distribution: is there a reason for political activities?]

"State interventionism in the family...is usually justified as a necessary correction of allocative and/or distributive distortions. A critical analysis of this argument, however, reveals three related aspects: 1) A changed regenerative behaviour is often less the result of inefficient inter-family decisions; rather it results from an efficient reaction to changed economic and political conditions. 2) Optimal inter-family decisions can be prevented by imperfect capital markets and interventionism of the welfare state. 3) A receding rate of fertility leads probably not only to a more even inter- and intra-family distribution of income, but also influences the inter-generational distribution in a positive way." (SUMMARY IN ENG)