How the household structure will change in the aging population of the Czech Republic in forthcoming decades?

Pavlína Habartová, Charles University in Prague
Klara Hulikova Tesarkova, Charles University in Prague
Olga Sivkova, Charles University in Prague

Population ageing and its impact on future population development in a given country or region are for its serious effects broadly studied these days. The same does not fully holds for the households structure in spite of the fact that knowledge of future development in family and household structure is a crucial issue to examine the socio-economic, environmental and other implications of population dynamics. Hence, the main objective of our contribution focuses on the impact of population ageing in the Czech Republic on current and future household structure. The household forecast till 2040 deals due to change in methodology of Czech population census 2011, which belongs to main data sources, with selected housekeeping households, i.e. one-person household, one-couple families with/without children and lone-parent families with/without children. In case of deterministic approach, which utilizes also official population projection issued by the Czech Statistical Office in 2013, three variants low, medium and high are under distinct assumptions calculated. While number of housekeeping households are computed employing the headship rate method, examination of household size utilizes to avoid inconsistencies headship rate method modification introduced by Ediev in 2007 for Austria. Further step of our research is to look on the household forecast for the Czech Republic from a different angle: probabilistic and to contribute to a discussion about forecast methodology. The preliminary results reveal moderate increase in overall number of housekeeping households in comparison with known figure 2011. In addition, the most probable contributor to the increase will be one-person households. As a result, average size of studied housekeeping households will probably decline over studied period 2013-2040.