Life-table representations of family dynamics in Sweden and Hungary: initiation of a project of descriptions of demographic behavior

In this paper, we present a system of descriptions of family-demographic behavior in developed countries. We use life-table techniques in order to describe the experiences of men, women, and children in processes related to family formation and family dissolution. We develop a large number of descriptive measures and apply them to survey data from Sweden and Hungary. The paper demonstrates the potential of our descriptive system for further cross-country comparisons of the demographic behavior in European countries. (AUTHORS)