中国近代之前,家、户名称相异,其内容和功能则相同、相异并存。一般而言,民众家载于户籍之上即为户。唐宋之前,在基层社会管理网络构建上,政府多以“家”为基本单位。宋之后,家户一体、家户并用、家户互代的制度性规定成为趋向,表明二者内容的一致性增强。就家、户成员范围来看,较多地表达将家人范围限定于亲子、夫妇、兄弟等具有血缘、姻缘等关系的近亲上,或在此基础上有所扩展,而不包括非亲属。但唐朝将共同生活的非亲属甚至奴婢也纳入“家人”之中,这实际是为了强化户主、家长对其约束责任,他们只能被视为准家人。关于户成员,既有将所有亲属和非亲属登记在册的做法,也有仅以男性成员或男丁为登记对象的做法。家、户成员的规模,按照多数王朝的制度规定,二者应该是一致的。但实际上,民众出于对利益的保护,寻求庇荫、隐冒和申报户口时故意漏口的做法甚多,尤其是赋役繁重时代;特权阶层庇荫亲属、隐占佃户行为也非个别现象,因而家大于户和户大于家两种情形均存在。故此,借助不同时期户口数量认识家庭规模和结构时需特别谨慎。 Before the modern China, the names of families and households were different, and their contents and functions were the same, but different from each other. In general, people’s homes are included in the household register is the household. Before the Tang and Song Dynasties, in the construction of grass-roots social management network, the government mostly used “home ” as the basic unit. After the Song Dynasty, the integration of household and household, the combination of household and household, and the institutional regulation of household generation became a trend, indicating that the content consistency between the two was enhanced. As far as the scope of family members and household members is concerned, they expressly extended their family members to close relatives, such as patriarchal clan, couple and brother, having blood ties and marital relations, or expanded on the basis of this, not including non-relatives. However, the Tang dynasty also included “non-relatives and even slaves living together” into “family members.” This is actually to strengthen the responsibility of the head of household and the parents, and they can only be regarded as quasi-family members. With regard to household members, there are both the practice of registering all relatives and non-relatives and the registration of only male members or men. The size of households and household members, according to the rules of the majority of dynasties, the two should be the same. However, in fact, the public out of their interests, seeking shelter, hidden dangers and declare the account intentional leakage of many practices, especially in the heavy labor-time; privileged class shade relatives, hidden account tenant behavior is not isolated, so Home than households and households greater than two cases exist. Therefore, special care should be taken when recognizing family size and structure with the aid of the number of hukou in different periods.