Global Families Research 

The Global Families project is a first-of-its-kind effort to collect and collate family-related data for every country in the world. To date, while much excellent data have been collected, the problem has been one of accessibility. For instance, if you wanted to know about marriage rates in sub-Saharan Africa, you often have to search for the data in a variety of places, including searching the internet, calling national statistics offices, and sending emails. Even then, it can be difficult to assess the quality of the data and ensure they are comparable to similar data for other countries.

This project aims to simplify the process by a) collecting and collating family-related data in one place and b) ensuring the data are of the highest quality. We can do this because we are academic researchers with years of experience collecting, collating, and analyzing family-related data.

Currently, the database includes information on families and children, including family structure, marriage and divorce rates, child poverty, child health, average household size, education and literacy, and child maltreatment, to name just a few. 

We are always looking for more! If you know of additional data, please email spencer_james@byu.edu. If you notice an error in our database, we would love to hear from you at that same email address.