SD | Radboud University
Today, people in wealthy countries can scarcely imagine life without a refrigerator, television or washing machine, but prior to 1960 very few households owned these appliances. From that point on, however, things moved quickly: just fifteen years or so later these items could be found in pretty much every kitchen and living room in these countries. This development from a society in which households own hardly any of these kinds of items to one in which almost every household has them is what the researchers refer to as ‘the domestic transition’. In their paper, they describe what this transition means for emerging countries and what factors contribute to a faster transition.