Lifeboat versus corporate ethic: social and demographic implications of stem and joint families.

We contrast stem and joint family systems, to show how differences in norms of inheritance and residence profoundly influence our values and social constructs. They shape how people evaluate each other and patterns of conflict and cooperation within and between generations. Through this, they influence many fundamental aspects of social organization and behaviour. These influence health outcomes through categorizing people into those whose health is encouraged to prosper or to fail. It also influences a wide range of other outcomes, including strategies of household resource management; migration; ways of exploiting commercial opportunities and the operation of civil society. A number of hypotheses are developed about the nature of these interrelationships, some of which are substantiated empirically and others which can be tested.