T he D evelopmental C ycle of the A ndros H ousehold : A D iachronic A nalysis 1

This study focuses on the changes in house‐hold composition that have occurred during the past decade in four villages located on southern Andros, Bahamas. A diachronic analysis of the changes that have occurred in the Andros household is presented, using as its methodology a statistical comparison of two censuses taken seven years apart. The statistical data fail to confirm the “typical” Andros developmental cycle, which had been derived from adult life histories (the historical method) and from frequency distributions of household types at one point in time (the cross‐sectional method). The existence of many different possible household cycles probably explains this failure.