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Whither the Oz household

Forget about the movie "Honey, I've Shrunk the Kids".

It's the Oz household which is shrinking in fairly alarming numbers and likely to continue to do so - as Hugh Mackay documents in this article in the SMH:

"By 2026, more than 3 million Australians will be living alone and more than 6 million will be living with just one other person. The size of the average Australian household will by then have fallen from the current record low of 2.6 persons to a jaw-dropping 2.3 or even 2.2 persons per household.

At present, about 50 per cent of Australians live in what were once regarded as conventional family households - mum, dad and the kids. Twenty years ago, that's how 60 per cent of us lived, but "couple with children" households are in statistical freefall: 20 years from now, a mere 40 per cent of us will be living in the traditional version of the family household. (All these figures come from the Australian Bureau of Statistics - one of our very few genuine national treasures, by the way.)"

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