Comparing family systems in Europe and Asia: Are there different sets of rules?

In seeing Europe as the forerunner in the development of industrial capitalism and of lower fertility, historians have examined predisposing factors in the web of family variables that may have led to these conditions. The influential hypothesis by John Hajnal draws a sharp line between the regimes of Europe and the rest of the world, particularly Asia. It acknowledges that mean household size does not differ significantly in the two cases, but attributes the difference to the contrast between the ''joint households'' of the East and the single-couple arrangements of the West. This article contends that the data do not fully justify such a sharp dichotomy. In particular, the categorization exaggerates the differences with respect to internal structure and also with respect to the related problems of family labor and service, household fission, and the public (rather than the familial) safety net for the aged poor.