Origins of Face-to-face Interaction with Kin in US Cities

TL;DR

This study investigates how face-to-face interactions with kin in US cities are influenced by availability and propensity, revealing that interaction frequency declines with city size due to reduced local family availability, while propensity remains stable or increases.

Contribution

It distinguishes between availability and propensity in face-to-face interactions with kin, providing large-scale empirical analysis of their effects across US cities.

Findings

Interaction frequency decreases with city size due to less local family availability.

Interaction propensity and duration are independent of or increase with city size.

Large-scale patterns influence understanding of social interventions and residential choices.

Abstract

People interact face-to-face on a frequent basis if (i) they live nearby and (ii) make the choice to meet. The first constitutes an availability of social ties; the second a propensity to interact with those ties. Despite being distinct social processes, most large-scale human interaction studies overlook these separate influences. Here, we study trends of interaction, availability, and propensity across US cities for a critical, abundant, and understudied type of social tie: extended family that live locally in separate households. We observe a systematic decline in interactions as a function of city population, which we attribute to decreased non-coresident local family availability. In contrast, interaction propensity and duration are either independent of or increase with city population. The large-scale patterns of availability and interaction propensity we discover, derived from analyzing the American Time Use Survey and Pew Social Trends Survey data, unveil previously-unknown effects on several social processes such as the effectiveness of pandemic-related social interventions, drivers affecting residential choice, and the ability of kin to provide care to family.