PIP: Chinese population policies have affected family dynamics as well as population size. The erratic administration of policies in rural and urban areas and among minorities and the Han majority has resulted in big differences in fertility and household size. The political structure allows for rapid changes in policy to be felt immediately. The family planning network has been effective and future fertility decline is expected. The mean age at marriage and divorces are expected to increase during the modernization process in China. Households will be affected under rapid socioeconomic development. Co-residence between parents and married children will become more undesirable, and household size will continue to decline. Co-residence will be affected differently by various factors. Co-residence will decline due to rapid economic development, access to pensions and social security, new housing construction, and relaxation of restriction migration policies. Co-residence will flourish under policies that promote the rural family contract responsibility system of production, that exclude rural farmers from a pension system, and that do not promote the three-generation household as a Chinese cultural tradition. Migration may add to extended families on a temporary basis. The Chinese ethical tradition of caring for the old is still alive. The opposing forces of tradition and change will determine the future structure of households. Children born during the 1970s will have fewer siblings, which will lessen the chances of leaving the parental home. A time may come when below replacement fertility will not allow for co-residence. The speed of transition to nuclear families has not yet been determined. From the 1920s through the 1940s household size was 5.3 members. By 1953 and 1964 household size had declined to 4.3 members. Even up to the 1960s fertility was around 5.68 members; reforms in land allocation began during the 1950s. By 1982 household size increased slightly to 4.43 members. Demographics could not explain the patterns in 1982. A reasonable guess was that the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976 created a serious housing shortage and prevented nuclear family units. By 1990 household size declined to 3.97 members, which was attributed to the demographic factors of fertility decline.