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INTRODUCTION
Overall, the "Hajnal line remains a good on-the-ground predictor for the Balkan peninsula, where strong tendencies toward household complexity and low marriage ages continued to exist well into the twentieth century. But as Maria Todorova and others have noted, these tendencies cannot be attributed to the entire Balkan region, especially if that region includes Romania and Bulgaria" (Plakans & Wetherell, 2005: 112). It is quite a long time since John Hajnal published his articles about a "European Marriage Pattern" (Hajnal, 1965) and two different household formation systems in Europe (Hajnal, 1982). There has been launched a series of severe criticisms to his concepts and therefore this article intends to shed new light on the household composition in two countries in Southeastern Europe: Albania and Serbia. The reasons for choosing these two countries are that Serbia is the country with the lowest percentages of unmarried people in Hajnal's article on marriage patterns (Hajnal, 1965 : 1 03), and has also the lowest percentages of unmarried women and the lowest age at marriage for women in Sklar's article on marriage behaviour in the demographic transition (Sklar, 1974: 245), while Albania is the last country in Southeastern Europe which entered the Demographic Transition. It is not the intention to discuss the applicability of the Hajnal line for the whole of Eastern Europe or East-Central Europe (Szohysek, 2008).
The research about household structures in the eastern half of Europe is still mostly an annex to the overall research of household structures in Europe. The reasons for this situation are manifold: missing sources, less interest from Western scholars, and less orientation of scholars from the region towards international research. Overall pictures of the region were mostly based on ethnographic studies or scattered quantitative studies of a few villages or cities. Another aspect is the spatial variation, which has not been investigated intensely: indepth studies concentrated on small areas, while the general view rests on these scattered studies, ethnographic evidence and mere assumptions.
At first the theoretical framework for household formation patterns in Southeastern Europe including some dissenting views is discussed. Then the data for this article is presented and the measures used are explained. The spatial distribution of multiple family households in both countries is analysed afterwards and conclusions...