governments

246 DISPERSAL
TABLE 32
Changes in household composition of villages between 1965 and 1970
- - - - -- - -- - - -
No. of households
No. of households No. of households created by KO. of hour~holds
VILLAGE in 1965 emigrated sub-division in 1970
A
B
C
D
E
F
BOREH
ISOLATED HOUSES
TOTALS 7' 27 7 5'
NEW HOUSES - - - 14
- - -- -
GRAND TOTALS 7' 27 7 65
was 8-0. For the 51 households of old stock in 1970 it was 8.5. The 14
new immigrant houses had an average of 6.6 giving an over-all average
for the 65.households at Meto in 1970 of 8-2.
The lower figure for new arrivals cannot be regarded as suggesting
an incipient change in Miao household structure. It is consistent with
the fact that migrants are often new sub-divisions of older households.
It is true that this tendency is not apparent in the cases of the households
which departed from Meto but this is probably due to the fact
that we have viewed the process from the emigration and not the
immigration end. It is unlikely that all the emigrants re-formed in
exactly the same households in their new locations.
The total population of the 71 households in 1965 was 570, and of the
65 households in 1970 it was 533. The sex composition of the 1970
population is shown in Table 33. Sex ratios continued to favour
females, as shown by Table 34. A similar balance in favour of females
was shown in births since 1965. The ratio of new births occurring in
Village A was 1-14 and for births in the Meto settlement as a whole it
was 1-25.
As marriage is strictly virilocal in Miao society, only women can be
lost or gained by households through marriage and divorce. The
over-all balance in this regard was against Meto in the five-year
period, as shown in the Table 35 which takes account only of households