Clustering Italian Families across Population Censuses: A space-time exploration

Since the second half of the twentieth century, family forms have become more diverse everywhere in Europe. At the end of the Seventies, traces of family changes began to emerge also in Italy. These changes intensified in the Nineties, and accelerated in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The aim of this paper consists in drawing a general, comprehensive background picture of the diffusion of new family patterns in Italy. We analyze the data of the Italian Population Censuses (1971–to–2011) - considered at municipality level - by applying spatial statistical methods, in order to establish the spatial distribution of family typologies, and their development over time. Our first results suggest that the structure of Italian families is changing deeply, following a pattern similar to that characterizing demographic transition in this country (from north-west to south-east, from urban areas to small villages).