Are multiple family households a means for economic success and a better living standard in the Balkans?
One of the controversies around multiple family households is about their economic success. On the one hand is the notion of these households hindering economic and other progress in pointing to the fact that the countries of Eastern and Southeastern Europe clearly lagged behind in economic and other progress as compared to societies in the northwest of Europe with their nuclear families and individualistic and capitalist thinking. On the other hand these households were described as being a means to prevent pauperisation of the peasantry and the fragmentation of land. The paper investigates the economic success of multiple family households in comparison to nuclear families for Serbia and Albania based on census and tax lists from the 19th and 20th centuries.
