The relationship of household and family organization to changes in the larger economy (e.g., commercialization, industrialization) has long fascinated and baffled scholars. Data that specifically link the household and/or family unit to economic change have proved elusive, and most studies do little more than note temporal crosscultural coincidences of demographic and residential characteristics with those of economic development. The means by which the household interacted with the economy, what the patterns of interaction were and how they were determined in a given time and place are significant questions which are seldom addressed. Even less accessible are the changes in the dynamics of household organization in conjunction with economic development in terms of informal economic and social exchanges and household and family formation.