The structure and characteristics of families: a review of the circumstances of children in the 1980s.

This paper brings together demographic information on the family circumstances of children of which there are over eleven million under the age of sixteen in Great Britain today. Our main concern is to examine the structure of the families in which these children are living and to provide a basis for analyzing the determinants of trends in childrens family circumstances during the 1980s....[We examine] the prevalence of different types of family in which children live the demographic and social determinants of these family types how the pattern has changed over time and the transitions between family types. Data are from registration statistics and official surveys. (EXCERPT)