A subregional analysis of family change: The spatial diffusion of one-parent families across Italian municipalities, 1991-2011

This paper documents the expansion of new family patterns in Italy by scrutinizing the spatial diffusion of one-parent families across Italian municipalities for the period 1991-2011. We apply a hierarchical Bayesian model to the data of the last three Italian Population Censuses, acknowledging that variation cannot be broken down into temporal and spatial effects because space-time interaction is at the very heart of family changes. Our results illustrate substantial sub-regional and sub-provincial heterogeneities in the spatial organization of family systems, patterns that might have gone undetected had larger territorial units of analysis been considered. In addition, we show that socio-economic factors were especially associated to the diffusion of new family forms. This paper challenges international scholarship on Italy that caricatures the country as a monolithic, homogeneous family-oriented, strong-family ties country.