This open access book presents the trends and patterns of demographic and family changes from all eleven countries in the region for the past 50 years. The rich data are coupled with historical, cultural and policy background to facilitate an understanding of the changes that families in Southeast Asia have been going through.  

The book is structured into two parts. Part A includes three segments preceded by a briefing on Southeast Asia. The first segment focuses on marital and partnership status in the region, particularly marriage rates, age at marriage, incidence of singlehood, cohabitation, and divorce. The second segment focuses on fertility indicators such as fertility rates (total, age-specific, adolescent), age at childbearing, and childlessness. The third presents information on household structures in the region by examining household sizes, and incidence of one-person households, single-parent families, as well as extended and composite households. PartB presents indicators of children and youth’s well-being.

Wei-Jun Jean Yeung is Provost’s Chair Professor of Sociology, Founding Director of the Centre for Family and Population Research, and a Research Leader of the Changing Family in Asia cluster in the Asia Research Institute in the National University of Singapore (NUS). Before joining NUS in 2008, she was with the University of Michigan and New York University. She has received many prestigious research awards including those from NSF, NICHD, and Singapore Ministry of Education. She is a leading scholar in demography and family studies whose work has been widely disseminated in top international channels.