This project will evaluate the household patterns of the elderly in nineteenth-century Europe in terms of alternative strategies for old age security: co-residence with children and accumulation of savings. Past research has challenged the view that multigeneration households were common in the past. Previous studies suggest that older persons with spouses or unmarried children tended to remain the heads of independent households, and some historians, notably Peter Laslett, question the role of married children in providing old age security. In the nineteenth century competing economic and demographic forces may have caused co- residence of parents with married children to increase or decrease. On one hand, higher incomes and more savings would have made parents less dependent on their children in old age. On the other hand, higher wages in the second generation could have made them more able to cope with the combined burden of elderly parents and their young children. Samples of the elderly will be drawn from population registers in the city of Verviers, Belgium for the years 1833 and 1866. Each sample will be followed for ten to fifteen years to reconstruct changes in household patterns and dynamics. The population registers also enable us to locate the children of ever-married sample members, and tax and probate records will provide information about wealth.
