Household Lifestyles: Ideas for a Research Program

A classification scheme for household lifestyles, and another for the activities of which they are comprised, are described as a necessary starting point for the analysis of the environmental impact of changes in household consumption. A household’s lifestyle is defined by how it carries out the activities, and households with similar lifestyles are grouped together. Exploratory analysis will be needed to define and name alternative ways of carrying out individual activities and alternative lifestyles. The resulting information can be accommodated in a social accounting matrix and different assumptions analyzed using an economic model of production and consumption. The approach to defining lifestyles and analyzing the impact of changes in lifestyles is readily generalized to the global scale. An earlier version of this paper was presented at Population, Consumption and Environment Dynamics: Theory and Method, Workshop Sponsored by Population-Environment Research Network, MacArthur Foundation, October 19, 2003, Montréal.