ABSTRACT This paper investigates the possibilities for the creation of a global dataset on family and household characteristics. This is done by scrutinizing and comparing two prominent data sources on family system classifications. We first focus on historical data, by comparing Emmanuel Todd's classification of countries by family systems with ethnographic data compiled in George Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas. Qualitative and quantitative tests show that the two datasets frequently agree about family traits. Nonetheless, substantial differences exist that are mostly attributable to the focus of the datasets on different regions, and the difficulties in translating local, descriptive studies to hard data. We therefore emphasize that it is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of the two datasets and emphasize that robustness checks are necessary in empirical research into family characteristics. We also compare these historical data with present-day data. This comparison suggests that family characteristics and the values associated with them can persist over long periods.

中文翻译：

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测试托德和匹配的默多克：历史家族特征的全球数据

摘要本文研究了创建有关家庭和家庭特征的全球数据集的可能性。这是通过仔细检查和比较有关家庭系统分类的两个重要数据源来完成的。我们首先关注历史数据，方法是将伊曼纽尔·托德（Emmanuel Todd）的按家庭制度划分的国家分类与乔治·默多克（George Murdock）的民族志地图集中的民族志数据进行比较。定性和定量测试表明，两个数据集经常就家庭特征达成共识。尽管如此，仍然存在实质性差异，这主要归因于数据集在不同区域的关注以及将本地描述性研究转换为硬数据的困难。因此，我们强调了解两个数据集的优缺点非常重要，并强调在进行家庭特征实证研究时必须进行鲁棒性检查。我们还将这些历史数据与当前数据进行比较。这种比较表明，家庭特征和与之相关的价值观可以长期存在。