Chapter 10

Cohabitation: The Pan-America View

Ron J. Lesthaeghe and Albert Esteve

1 Introduction

In this concluding chapter we shall reflect on a series of issues of both a method-

ological and substantive nature encountered in this research project. Firstly, we
must realize that the use of individual census records not only opened vast possibili-
ties, but also entails a number of limitations. Secondly, the very large sample sizes
allowed for the disaggregation of national trends into far more detailed spatial, eth-
nic and educational patterns. This, in its turn, allowed us to adopt a “geo-historical”
view of the rise of cohabitation for almost the entire American continent, from
Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Such an approach is an indispensable ingredient in
understanding settings in which older and newer pattern of cohabitation meet and
intermingle. Furthermore, another crucial feature is that statistical analyses could be
performed at the individual and contextual levels simultaneously. Individuals have
histories, but regions have much longer histories. Therefore contextual analyses are
of paramount importance.
This volume is but a starting point for much more in-depth studies of partnership
formation in the Americas, and particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Indeed, there is ample room for studies that follow the life course longitudinally
(Bozon et al. 2009; Grace and Sweeney 2014) and for qualitative studies probing
into the motivations for preferring cohabitation over marriage. Nevertheless, as the

R.J. Lesthaeghe (*)

Free University of Brussels and Royal Flemish Academy of Arts and Sciences of Belgium,
Brussels, Belgium
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Esteve
Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB),
Bellaterra, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2016 269

A. Esteve, R.J. Lesthaeghe (eds.), Cohabitation and Marriage
in the Americas: Geo-historical Legacies and New Trends,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31442-6_10
270 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

more detailed conclusions below will illustrate, a statistical analysis of the vast body
of census information since the 1970s or 1980s is a necessary stepping stone. These
analyses bring out unexpected variations, intriguing patterns of diffusion, and
intricate interactive effects. And by doing so, pre-existing theories and expectations
could be challenged, adapted or refined.

2 Data and Analyses

The vast majority of the data used in this volume stem from the large samples of
individual census records as compiled and archived by the Minnesota Population
Center. This unique and vast data set is known as the Integrated Public Use
Microdata Series or IPUMS for short (Minnesota Population Center 2014). In all
Latin American sources, there were direct questions as to the presence and nature of
partnerships, including the category of consensual union. In Mexico, we could even
make use of such information for the 1930 census, thanks to the recovery efforts
made by the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI). In
Canada there is a direct question since 1986. In the US, where unmarried cohabita-
tion was uncommon and theoretically illegal, such a straightforward question was
absent, and as a result, indirect procedures had to be used, which presumably under-
estimated the true incidence of the phenomenon (Kennedy and Fitch 2012). In addi-
tion, several chapters were also able to use information stemming from large scale
surveys, such as the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) or the pooled annual
American Community Surveys for the period 2007–2011. It should be noted that the
DHS surveys do not permit a more detailed spatial decomposition and are best used
for entire countries.
The reader will note that the present project bears some resemblance to the
well-known “Princeton European Fertility Project” of the 1970s studying the spatial
aspects of the European fertility transition (Coale and Watkins 1986). This was
equally a census-based investigation, but of regional patterns of fertility control and
their economic and cultural determinants. The main criticism of the Princeton proj-
ect pertained, obviously for the lack of better, to its exclusive use of aggregate data
only. The availability of individual census records in the IPUMS files has entirely
removed that barrier. The net outcome is that the present analyses of patterns of
cohabitation can be performed both at the individual and the contextual levels
simultaneously.
The spatial disaggregation of the national data sets not only pertains to entities
such as large provinces and states but very frequently also to much smaller spatial
units such as cantons, meso-regions or even municipalities. The outcome is that this
project is unique in having information for over 19,000 such spatial units. Obviously
the study of contextual effects is considerably enhanced by the availability of such
smaller units. For instance, for Mexico, a very detailed disaggregation has been
highly instrumental in documenting the diffusion pattern of consensual unions,
which we certainly would have missed if our information would have been restricted
to the Mexican states only. Very much the same would have happened in the US if
10 Cohabitation: The Pan-America View 271

the analysis were conducted at the level of the states, instead of at the currently used
much finer grid of the Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs).
A major drawback of census data is the lack of retrospective information con-
cerning the process of union formation. In other words, we only know the current
type of partnership, i.e. married or cohabiting, but we do not know how the union
was initiated. Obviously a simple question of having ever experienced a period of
living in a consensual union would have gone a long way in splitting up the large
category of married respondents into those who ever and those who never cohab-
ited. As a result, we have to be careful when interpreting the lower figures of cohabi-
tation for somewhat older women, as these can result from either a straightforward
cohort effect (older generations cohabiting less) or from a life cycle effect (the dif-
ferential conversion of cohabitation into marriage as age advances). Similarly, when
considering a negative education profile of cohabitation in the age group 25–29, we
do not know whether the better educated have a lower incidence because they were
less prone to initiate a partnership via cohabitation at the onset, or whether they
started out in the same way as the others but more frequently converted their con-
sensual union into a marriage later on. We presume that it is likely that the latter
pattern becomes more frequent as the stigma against cohabitation is lifted and as the
incidence of cohabitation is rising among new cohorts. In this instance, marriage is
not a pledge of commitment for the future, but the outcome of a tested stable exist-
ing relationship (Furstenberg 2014). This conundrum could be solved partially by
considering younger women, but then many have not yet initiated a partnership of
any kind, and those who have are a self-selected subsample at any rate. Furthermore,
with advancing education, more permanent partnerships are commonly being initi-
ated later as well. In the balance, our frequent focus on the 25–29 age group is a
compromise, but it is not without drawbacks. Therefore, whenever possible, we
have reconstructed the full cohort profiles by age and education.
But there are also limitations on the independent variables side. Most censuses
have information on the level of education. This is a crucial variable, but it has many
meanings and is therefore a proxy for both economic and cultural dimensions (e.g.
income, social class, openness to the world, political awareness and cultural moder-
nity). Also, the rise in education over the years may not have altered the relative
social position of the younger generations compared to the older: literate daughters
can still be as poor as their illiterate mothers. And this may hold in particular in
societies with large class differentials and ethno-racial stratification.
Language and ethnicity are also important variables commonly recorded in cen-
suses. But very often only the first language is recorded. Most respondents in
Hispanic countries state that they are Spanish speakers, but they may also use indig-
enous languages which remain unrecorded in several censuses. As such, the relative
sizes of indigenous populations tend to be underestimated.1 Religious denomination

1
Bolivia is an exception as the latest census records up to three languages per respondent. This also
permits to check the bias in the instance that only a single language were recorded. In the case of
Bolivia 49.6 % give Spanish as a first language, but 17.5 % use it in combination with an indige-
nous language. If ethnicity is what needs to be captured then the latter group should be added in
with their respective indigenous group.
272 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

is another important variable, but denomination alone falls short of measuring

religiosity or the importance of religion in a person’s meaning-giving system. It is
well known that Evangelical Christians and Mormons strongly oppose cohabitation,
but for the large category of Catholics, denomination alone falls short of what is
wanted. Actual practice of Sunday Mass attendance would also be needed. Also,
censuses provide no information about the importance of syncretic religions which
mix Christianity and older native religions. These syncretic religions are very
important in Brazil and in the Andean region. Furthermore, the category without
religion is probably a more mixed bag and does not only capture agnostics.
Finally, and very importantly, censuses provide no clues whatsoever on cultural
shifts. More specifically, we have to infer the de-stigmatization of cohabitation from
the mere rise of this form of partnership, but we cannot link it to related dimensions
of changes in ethics at the individual level and to patterns of secularization at the
contextual level. All that can be done is to use illustrations with data from other
sources, such as the successive rounds of the World Values Surveys.2 In other words,
crucial cultural changes in attitudes toward politics, religion, and ethics are flying
under the radar, which will inevitably lead to the underestimation (or worse, even
negation) of their effect.
With these caveats in mind, we can now turn to the substantive findings.

3 The Pertinence of Historical Factors and Contexts

Indigenous populations, European immigrants and African slaves all had their dis-
tinct systems of partnership formation, but over the centuries, religious conversion,
colonial reorganization, and marked ethno-racial social stratification frequently
resulted in new sui generis partnership patterns as well.3 During the twentieth cen-
tury, and possibly even earlier, the general tendency was that consensual unions
would eventually be replaced by the standard European pattern of marriage. But large
pockets would remain, mainly among Afro-Americans and selected indigenous
groups, in which the tradition of forming consensual unions would be maintained.

2
It should be noted that the sample sizes of the national data sets of the World Values Surveys are
often quite small which poses problems when trends need to be inferred. Moreover, the surveys
outside Europe only capture the current status of the partnership, i.e. married or in a consensual
union, but do not ask the simple “ever cohabited ?” question. As a result, the large group of cur-
rently married respondents cannot be split up into those who ever and those who never cohabited.
This shortcoming blurs the differences between current cohabitors and currently married respon-
dents. This is all the more regrettable since the WVS is a major source of information on ethical,
psychological, political and religious orientations.
3
For many years the Franco-German television channel ARTE featured a program called “le des-
sous des cartes” in which masterly interpretations were given of what laid underneath various
phenomena documented by means of maps or landscape photography. In our case, there is no way
of understanding the maps of Chap. 1 without such a deeper historical probing into their “dessous”.
Spatial representations may indeed provide windows into the past, but the views are, unfortunately,
not always that crystal clear.
10 Cohabitation: The Pan-America View 273

So far, this summary of the situation would have been accurate until about 1970.4
After that date the pattern of union formation turns around with cohabitation
gaining greater prominence and even becoming the modal form in many places.
We shall refer to this later period as the “reversal phase”, which in fact is not yet
completed, as further rises in cohabitation are to be expected in areas with a later
take-off.
What are the salient characteristics of the reversal phase? First and foremost, the
effects of social stratification, religion and ethnicity are continuing to be of major
importance. In other words, the historical “pattern of disadvantage” is still in evi-
dence, virtually everywhere in the Americas. Only in Canada are these effects
strongly attenuated since this is a much more egalitarian society with only small
Indian, Inuit and Métis populations. Aside from the Canadian case, if one is black
or belonging to an indigenous group, not very religious, and poorly educated, then
the odds of starting and remaining in a consensual union are largest. If one is white,
well educated, and religious, then the odds are totally reversed. This not only holds
at the individual level, but at the contextual level as well. Hence, if one is black,
uneducated and not very religious, and one furthermore resides in an ethnic, poor
and not particularly religious area, then the odds for entering and staying in cohabi-
tation increase even more. Also, residence in an area with more immigrants system-
atically increases the odds for cohabitation. Conversely, the odds shrink further for
white educated and religious persons residing in areas with similar contextual char-
acteristics. In all countries for which contextual analyses could be performed with
a finer spatial resolution, it was found that the contextual effects were highly signifi-
cant and, even more importantly, entirely robust for controls for individual charac-
teristics.5 In other words, area or region of residence matters a great deal over and
above the effects of individual characteristics.
There are major exceptions to this basic rule. Several indigenous populations
must have lost their preference for cohabitation much further in the past or had a
pattern with more monogamous marriage at the onset.6 For instance, among the
Mayan groups in both Mexico and Guatemala monogamous marriage is the pre-
ferred form of entering a union, even if marriages take place at young ages (see also
Grace and Sweeney 2014). Similarly, several Andean native populations in
Columbia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru do not stand out as having a higher prevalence
of consensual unions either. In fact, the maps in Chap. 1 show that there is an Andean
Altiplano ridge of low cohabitation. The Bolivian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian cen-

4
The 1930 census records for Mexican indigenous populations perfectly illustrate this point. For
all these populations, irrespective of the initial level prevalent in the 1920s, the incidence of con-
sensual unions declines during the following four decades.
5
If that were also true for the history of fertility control in European provinces, then the Princeton
results would have reflected genuine contextual effects.
6
The exceptions of indigenous groups with a strong marriage preference tend to be old complex
civilizations (Maya, Inca and affiliated) with fixed settlements and based on agriculture. This sug-
gests an explanation along the Boserup-Goody lines, which links more advanced agriculture, set-
tled population and state formation to control of properties via controlled marriage and the a
stronger institutionalization of marriage as well (see J. Goody 1976).
274 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

suses reveal that the two largest ethnic groups (i.e. the Quechua and Aymara) have,
controlling for other characteristics, the lowest incidence of cohabitation.7 By con-
trast, for Afro-American populations, we have not encountered any exceptions in
the present set of country studies. Whether in the US, in the Caribbean, or along the
Pacific coast of Colombia, the odds for cohabitation among women ages 25–29 are
always higher for black descendants of slaves than for whites or for most indigenous
or mixed populations.
The dichotomy sketched above merely capture the two extremes of the contin-
uum. Decades, if not centuries, of mestizaje or miscegenation have blurred the
ethno-racial factor. Mass migration to urban areas and megalopolis has created new
patterns of segregation. And the growing Evangelical adherence has produced a
reaction against the prevailing demographic and ethical trends. As a consequence,
there are various combinations of factors that produce intermediate results. In order
to illustrate these interactions between conditioning factors, our contextual vari-
ables are being constructed as combinations of categories. This leads to interesting
insights. Here are a few examples.
In the US, the effect of the “pattern of disadvantage” on cohabitation completely
disappears for the Black population when residing in areas with a large Evangelical
presence and it is also attenuated when there is a strong presence of Afro-Protestant
churches. Conversely, the odds for cohabitation increase with increasing propor-
tions Catholic and Mainstream Protestants in the US PUMA areas. Also residence
in a PUMA with a strong Democrat political composition increases the odds for
cohabitation for everyone.8
Another example of an interactive effect pertains to Mexican areas with a high
concentration of educated women. In these upper social strata municipalities the
odds for cohabitation were not lower, as expected, but significantly higher.
Furthermore, this puzzling feature remained robust for all sorts of controls. A fur-
ther scrutiny revealed that it was not women with more than secondary education
that produced the positive contextual effect, but the least educated women residing
in these areas. A plausible explanation for this is that women with no more than
primary education find employment in the larger service sector in better off munici-
palities, and on the basis of their earnings can maintain a cohabiting household.
Moreover, in such settings, the de-stigmatization of cohabitation could have
advanced further than in the more homogeneous municipalities.

7
Both groups are descendants of old civilizations and they have retained strong traditions and have
absorbed Christianity within their older “cosmovision” inhabited by spirits of lakes, rivers and
mountains. Among Quechua and Aymara, marriage is a kinship group affair and highly ritualized.
Boys and girls may have a period of flirtation, but thereafter, the parents on both sides will seize
control in organizing the marriage and the subsequent fertility rituals. The entire village witnesses
the marriage procession.
8
Another interpretation of this finding would be that cohabiting couples prefer residing in areas
where that behavior is more commonly accepted, i.e. in areas with a strong Democrat tradition.
This would contribute to the phenomenon of the “Big Sort” (Bishop and Cushing 2008) in which
individuals or families seek like-minded areas with respect to political allegiance and family
characteristics.
10 Cohabitation: The Pan-America View 275

In the example of Brazil, individual membership of an indigenous or Black pop-

ulation is indicative of a higher risk for cohabitation, but the effect of this individual
characteristic is either strongly attenuated or reinforced depending on the strength
of Catholicism in the various meso-regions. In this interaction, a higher than aver-
age percentage of Catholics in the area substantially reduces the incidence of cohab-
itation, also for Blacks. Furthermore, the importance of religion in Brazil equally
shows up at the individual level, with Lutheran Protestants (mostly whites), Baptist
and Evangelicals (mostly Pardo or non-whites) having much smaller odds than
Catholics, whereas women 25–29 in a union reporting no religion have a much
higher incidence of being in a consensual union. Another striking feature for Brazil
is that the educational contrasts are very substantial at the individual level, but much
less so at the contextual one.
In Colombia 2005, the most striking effects in favor of cohabitation at the indi-
vidual level are found for education, with the classic negative gradient, and for
membership of the Afro-Colombian group. This population is concentrated along
the Caribbean and Pacific coasts and the northern mining regions. By contrast,
membership of an indigenous population compared to the majority of the mixed
race population reduces the incidence of cohabitation. This is, along with the Mayas
of Mexico and the Quechua and Aymara of Peru and Bolivia, another example of the
fact that the correlation between ethnicity and consensual union formation is weaker
for the indigenous Americans than for the Afro-American populations. Furthermore,
as in Brazil, the contextual effect of education is weak, but that of the local strength
of Catholicism much more important in reducing the incidence of cohabitation.
Hence, Colombia is a typical case of continued heterogeneity according to social
class and race (essentially Afro-Columbian versus others), but also of persisting
regional differentiation according to the historical strength of Catholicism.
In Ecuador 2010, the negative gradient with education has been maintained dur-
ing the reversal phase, in tandem with the impact of the ethnic factor. As expected,
Black and mulatto populations have considerably higher proportions of women in
consensual unions, whereas Quechua speakers maintain their strong tradition of
moving into marriage. The populations on the Amazonian side such as the Shuar
(Jivaro) fit the pattern with widespread cohabitation. At the contextual level, being
a resident in a predominantly Quechua speaking area decreases the incidence of
cohabitation even more. A similar, but weaker, effect in the same direction is also
found when resident in areas of less immigration.
The Peruvian findings for 2007 are more attenuated. The education gradient
remains negative, but the ethnic differentiation is less pronounced. The Quechua
speakers are not standing out anymore, and it is the Aymara that now have the lower
incidence of cohabitation. By contrast, the small groups on the Amazonian side,
such as the Ashaninka, have much higher levels. The other dominant trait in Peru is
the impact of Evangelical proliferation. The strong negative effect on cohabitation
associated with being Evangelical Christians emerges mainly at the individual level,
and not so much at the contextual level of the provinces. In fact, the Peruvian
contextual effects as measured here are of secondary importance to the individual
ones. The reasons for this are not only the weaker contrasts at the individual level,
276 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

but equally the greater homogeneity of the 176 Peruvian provinces than in the
neighboring Andean countries. It should also be stressed that Peru and Colombia
have had a more rapid expansion of cohabitation than Bolivia and Ecuador, and that
this could have contributed to a leveling of contrasts.
In Bolivia 2001, the education related gradient is steep, with less cohabitation
among young women with secondary education or and much less among those with
university degrees. Also at the individual level, Aymara, Quechua and Chiquitano
speakers have again considerably lower relative odds for being in a consensual
union, whereas the Guarani and other indigenous populations exhibit the reverse
pattern. The contextual effects among the 84 provinces are more pronounced than in
Peru. In addition to the individual effect of ethnicity, residence in areas with mainly
Quechua and Aymara speakers significantly reduces the odds for cohabitation. The
same holds for residence in areas with fewer immigrants. By contrast, the educa-
tional composition of the provinces produces no extra contextual effect.
In Central America, the evolution in the prevalence of consensual unions over the
past five decades has shown different paces of change across countries and an
increasing convergence in cohabitation levels. In general, countries which already
had high levels of cohabitation in the 1960s (e.g., El Salvador, Honduras, Panama)
have experienced small to moderate increases whereas countries with traditionally
low levels of cohabitation, such as Costa Rica, have undergone large increases.
Guatemala is the only country where a downward trend can be observed during the
second half of the twentieth century, although recent survey data from 2011 suggest
that the decline in cohabitation has halted and is possibly reversing. The recent
increase in cohabitation in Central America has been largely concentrated among
women with secondary and higher education, for whom cohabitation was negligible
in the past. As elsewhere in Latin America, the historically negative educational
gradient of cohabitation remains largely in place, but differentials in union patterns
by educational level have narrowed considerably in the past two decades. The
spread of cohabitation among the middle and upper classes has probably been facili-
tated by the wide social recognition conferred on consensual unions in the lower
strata, but it challenges the traditional strong association between cohabitation,
poverty and social disadvantage.

4 Indigenous Latin American Marriage and Cohabitation

in a Global Perspective

It is frequently stated that consensual unions are common among indigenous people
in Latin America and that this is the main reason for the expansion of cohabitation.
Such a general formulation is invalid for major parts of the continent. In fact, our
scrutiny of late twentieth and twenty-first century demographic data reveals the
existence of a high degree of heterogeneity among native populations, and not only
between whites and others. The Zapotec of Mexico, the Mayas of Mexico and
10 Cohabitation: The Pan-America View 277

Guatemala, and the Quechua and Aymara of the central Andean Altiplano stand out
by considerably lower levels of cohabitation. The Nahuatl group in Mexico who are
considered to be the direct descendants of the Aztecs have intermediate levels of
cohabitation, but the adjacent civilizations in Central Mexico, i.e. the Mazahua,
Otomi and Purepecha had the lowest incidence of consensual unions in 1930 and
still are at the lower end of the distribution in 2010. These pre-Hispanic civilizations
were based on intensive agriculture often with irrigation and terracing, advanced
architecture and technology, state formation and central control, priestly and
military castes, and local tribal nobilities. At the other extreme were hunter-gatherer
populations and groups that engaged in shifting agriculture (slash and burn).
These societies had much simpler forms of organization with only local heads, or
occasionally in South America, even without any clear fixed pattern of authority
structure.
This duality fits the Boserup-Goody typology of global patterns of partnership
formation (Goody 1976). According to these authors, populations that reached the
stage of intensive and technologically advanced forms of agriculture also tend to
form larger states, develop a system of social stratification with social classes or
castes, and have appropriation of agricultural land. If land belongs to a corporate
kinship group or to smaller individual families, marriages need to be controlled to
avoid misalliances resulting in devolution of property. In this situation, there is
much less room for free partnership formation, shifting partnerships, polyandry,
sister exchange etc. Instead, marriage becomes a firm institution under parental or
kinship control, and marriages are furthermore ritualized. This commonly involves
a public and elaborate ceremony (or even a sequence of ceremonies). A further dis-
tinction is made by Goody concerning the direction of the exchange of goods. In
systems with “diverging devolution” women alienate property upon marriage
through their dowry (bridewealth). In the opposite systems, exchanges are either
bilateral or are at the expense of the male kinship group (brideprice). In the former
system women are “a loss” to their brothers, and societies with diverging devolution
tend to be strongly “patriarchal” with endogamous and arranged marriages, and
various sorts of discriminations against women. Most Asian societies exhibit these
characteristics. In the type without diverging devolution of property, such “patriar-
chal” control is much milder, and in the European setting the Catholic Church fur-
ther limited the control of marriages by the parents and kin (Goody 1983). Unless
altered by Islam, most sub-Saharan African populations have the system of bride-
wealth and of exogamous marriages. They also had slash and burn agriculture,
lacked irrigation and plough, and had no individual appropriation of land. They are
at the opposite end of the Boserup-Goody typology.
The Goody-Boserup reasoning goes a long way in describing the present duality
concerning the incidence of cohabitation. Several Central Mexican, Zapotec, Maya,
Quechua, and Aymara populations all seem to have maintained systems of stronger
marriage control by parents and kin. Moreover, the Quechua-Aymara group is
known for the lavish marriage ceremonies and other celebrations associated with
rites of passage (births, puberty, deaths, fertility rites).
278 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

The duality between populations of pre-Hispanic organized empires and others

was of direct relevance for the Spanish conquerors and missionaries. The Catholic
monogamous marriage and its ceremony fitted the indigenous forms much better for
populations such as the Quechua, Aymara or Maya. Hence, over time, cohabitation
did not become the rule among them. By contrast, for most of the other indigenous
populations without complex state formation, Christian marriage was not only an
alien concept, but ran entirely against the much more free forms of courtship and
partnership. This is very well illustrated by Livi-Bacci (2010) who describes the
Jesuit efforts to eradicate widespread “promiscuity” in Chiquitano9 and Guarani
populations around their seventeenth century missions. Today, according to the cur-
rent Bolivian census figures, marriages are considerably more prevalent among the
Chiquitano than among the Guarani.
As stated in the introduction to this chapter, regions have much longer histories
than individuals. As is clear by now, the current picture of partnership formation is
still influenced by the historical structuration of centuries ago. The impact of
Christianization is undeniable, but older patterns of consensual union formation
commonly prevailed. The “dessous des cartes” is at least five centuries deep.
Nevertheless, an entirely new wave of change started rolling over the pre-existing
patterns from the 1970s onward. That wave is commonly referred to as the “Second
Demographic Transition”.

5 The Trend Reversal and the Second Demographic

Transition (SDT) Factors

The core thesis of the SDT-theory is the Maslowian principle that the nature of
needs changes as populations become wealthier and, by extension, more educated.
As the material needs are better satisfied, more non-material needs tend to be accen-
tuated, and populations become more vocal in articulating them. This mechanism
also translates into cultural changes, with individuals stressing the right to make
decisions autonomously, i.e. independently of religious or older moral codes, and
furthermore in articulating expressive needs: freedom of choice, self-actualization
and emancipation, maintenance of a more open future and flexibility, gender equity
etc.10 The manifestations at the macro-level are the growth of emancipation move-
ments claiming equal rights for women or for ethnic or sexual minorities, further
secularization, and concomitant de-stigmatization of a number of moral issues such

9
Chiquitano refers to the Jesuit mission along the Chiquitos river and to the common language that
was imposed by the Jesuits on a variety of indigenous groups.
10
Sometimes the term “individual autonomy” is taken as meaning “more selfishness”. This is a
misinterpretation. Individual autonomy only refers to the right of self-determination, and has noth-
ing to do with selfishness or altruism, which is a completely different dimension that is not an
ingredient of the SDT. The confusion probably stems from the multiple meanings of the term
“individualism”.
10 Cohabitation: The Pan-America View 279

as divorce, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality and suicide. Obviously, the moral

stigma against the formation of a sexual union outside marriage belongs to that
values dimension as well.
The SDT factors work in three different ways. Firstly, the pattern of union forma-
tion now belongs to the domain of individual choice (i.e. autonomy) and not any
longer to that of a corporate or collective normative regulation. If choices are open,
then the cost-benefit evaluation as perceived by individuals (rather than families)
applies to a greater extent, and these evaluations may not be the same for men and
women respectively. Also, the elements in the calculation must not of necessity be
of a mere material nature. Fidelity and trust, for instance, may score equally high on
the priority list, and if not guaranteed at the onset, a period of cohabitation could
be preferred over marriage. Translated into the “Ready, Willing, and Able” (RWA)
framework of preconditions for the adoption of new forms of behavior (Coale
1973), the opening up of wider choices and the evaluation of advantages and disad-
vantages constitute the “Readiness”-factor.
“Willingness” refers to the normative, i.e. the religious or moral acceptability of
forms of behavior. The SDT operates via the “Willingness”-factor through the
aforementioned de-stigmatization of a number of hitherto negatively sanctioned
forms of conduct. There is often a positive recursive relationship at work: as reli-
gious or moral objections to a given form of conduct weaken, then the practice of
that behavior will spread, and as that occurs, then the religious and moral objections
will weaken even further.
“Ability” refers to the technical or legal constraints or possibilities for the new
form of behavior to materialize. In the context of cohabitation, mainly the legal
context is of relevance.11 Typically, as a new form of behavior spreads, the legal
system tends to adapt, but this frequently involves time lags of varying durations. In
most Latin American countries, the legal impediments to consensual unions were
not of a prohibitive nature, but that was not so in Canada and especially not in the
US. On the whole, except for the Canadian chapter, the legal situations and their
changes have been completely underexposed in this volume, as this requires spe-
cialists’ competence in what is often a complex and diverse subject matter.
An essential implication of the RWA-model is that these preconditions need to be
met jointly for the outcome to materialize. However, these three components do not
change at the same speed. Contrary to intuition, the slowest of the three conditions
at the aggregate level does not set the ultimate pace of change of the outcome fea-
ture. This ultimate pace is slower still. The reason for this is that the conditions
change at the individual level, and that the slowest condition in the aggregate is not
of necessity uniformly the slowest for all the individuals. It is the remaining smaller
group of individuals with lower scores on the other factors who slow down the
process to an extra degree (Lesthaeghe and Vanderhoeft 2001). The implication of
this form of change is that bottlenecks become even more important than they seem

11
In the case of the fertility transition, the “ability” factor was not only of a legal nature, but also
refers to the growing perfection of contraceptive methods and to the greater availability of such
methods.
280 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

at first sight. For instance, even if cohabitation would have many advantages over
marriage (high R) and if both forms of unions were legally equivalent (neutral A),
then this form of partnership would emerge even slower than the pace set by the
gradual removal of the religious or moral objections. This illustrates that the rapid
rise in cohabitation as witnessed in so many parts of the Americas could not have
taken place without the very fast removal of the moral and religious stigmata against
it. In other words, the rapid rise of cohabitation required nothing less than an “ethi-
cal revolution”, similar to the “cultural revolution” that occurred in Western Europe
in the 1960s and 1970s.
The cost-benefit evaluation of the marriage-cohabitation duality (Readiness) can
obviously not be addressed with census records. More qualitative studies are
required for that. Most of the sources that shed light on the motivations stem from
US or European sources, and point to a multitude of elements being involved
(e.g. Liefbroer 1991). Crucial factors cited in focus-groups in eight European
countries seem to be centered around “commitment”, “the testing of a relationship”
and “freedom” (Perelli-Harris et al. 2014).12 In the Latin American context, there is,
to our knowledge, no equivalent set of studies based on focus groups or in-depth
interviews that probe into the motivations plethora. One can imagine that the
three key dimensions found among European motivations would be relevant for the
Latin American context as well, but we have no comparable investigations that
would document this point or bring up other dimensions (e.g. “respect for
tradition”, “affordability of marriage”, “weak employment prospects”, to name a
few possibilities).
Also the dynamics of the process of partner formation help in interpreting the
various meanings of cohabitation. With respect to the process of partnership forma-
tion over time, several surveys are by now available that have retrospective informa-
tion on the sequences of events (e.g. DHS), but, with a few very recent exceptions
(e.g. Covre-Sussai et al. 2015; Grace and Sweeney 2014), these data have remained
underexploited on this topic.
Information on the “willingness”-factor can be gleaned from the World Values
Surveys (WVS) as they measure attitudes in the domain of ethics. In fact, the WVS
rounds that often started in the 1990s in Latin American countries are capable of
documenting the “ethics revolution” in several cases. At the individual level, no link
can be established between the ethics attitudes and type of partnership for the lack
of a retrospective probe among married women about a possible prior cohabitation
experience, but the WVS does provide aggregate trends on the ethics changes and
de-stigmatization. We shall provide some further details on these issues in the next
section.

12
In this 2014 article Perelli-Harris et al. explicitly claim that the SDT theory suggests that cohabi-
tation would completely replace marriage. We quote: “This dominant opinion (i.e. of participants
emphasizing the value of marriage) suggests that marriage is not likely to disappear, as suggested
by proponents of the Second Demographic Transition …” (p.1066). This is another misrepresenta-
tion: the SDT theory only claims that there would be a growing diversity in partnership types with
cohabitation taking a more prominent place, not at all the total demise of marriage.
10 Cohabitation: The Pan-America View 281

6 The Education Gradient and the “Ethics Revolution”

As indicated, the historical negative gradient of cohabitation with respect to the

level of education is a well-nigh universal Pan-American pattern, which, further-
more, remains largely in place during the reversal phase so far.13 If the only process
at work would be a composition change with respect to the considerable increases
in education levels for men and women, then, given the negative gradient, consen-
sual unions would have yielded further to marriage. In other words, no trend rever-
sal would have taken place and the old trend towards more marriage would have
been reinforced. Yet, the trend reversal is as universal as the negative cohabitation-
education gradient itself. As depicted in all the previous chapters, since the 1970s
the share of cohabitation among women in a union 25–29 has increased at all levels
of education. Moreover, this holds for the adjacent age groups as well. Apparently,
within an SDT-context, rising education must have spurred on the degree of auton-
omy of young adults in making crucial decisions, and must have de-stigmatized the
formation of consensual unions among population segments, such as urban edu-
cated whites, that had hitherto exhibited a strong preference for marriage. Moreover,
one could argue that autonomy in decision making and the de-stigmatization could
have been initiated by the better educated in American societies. Data on the “ethics
revolution” are supportive of this conjecture.
In Figs. 10.1 and 10.2 use is made of WVS-data pertaining to the “ethics revolu-
tion” for selected countries for which there are multiple measurements in time.
Divorce is not so much of an ethical issue anymore, and suicide is only at the very
beginning of de-stigmatization in the Americas.14 More specifically, we have plotted
the percentages of respondents (18+, both sexes) that are of the opinion that homo-
sexuality and euthanasia can never be justified, and we show the results for three
education levels and for two periods, the 1990s and the years 2005–06. These trends
by education in acceptability of euthanasia and homosexuality document very
clearly that the inferred de-stigmatization of cohabitation is matched by the explic-
itly measured de-stigmatization of the other two ethics issues. The results of Figs.
10.1 and 10.2 plainly indicate that for each period considered there is a clear educa-
tion gradient, with the rejection of euthanasia and homosexuality weakening with
advancing education. Conversely, the degree of de-stigmatization increases with
education. In addition, the rejection of euthanasia and homosexuality rapidly weak-
ens over time, with much smaller percentages taking a negative view in the twenty-
first century measurements compared to those of the 1990s. In other words, these
findings are in line with the interpretation that the de-stigmatization started in the

13
We must realize that by 2010, the increases in cohabitation had not come to an end, and it could
well be that the less educated will reach an upper ceiling, while the better educated are still catch-
ing up. At this point, the negative education gradient would become flatter or could possibly disap-
pear. The changing Uruguayan gradient is an example of such an evolution. It should also be noted
that the negative gradients with respect to education in the Canadian provinces are noticeably less
steep than elsewhere and even absent in Quebec.
14
Acceptability of suicide is further advanced in Northern and Western Europe.
282 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

Fig. 10.1 Percentages of population 18+ of the opinion that homosexuality is never justified, by
education and period (Source: Authors’ elaboration based on World Values Surveys)

Fig. 10.2 Percentages of population 18+ of the opinion that euthanasia is never justified, by edu-
cation and period (Source: Authors’ elaboration based on World Values Surveys)
10 Cohabitation: The Pan-America View 283

higher education strata and, in tandem with advancing education, spread to the
society as a whole.15 So far, that positive gradient of ethical tolerance and education
has remained intact. Hence, with respect to the “ethics revolution” there is no con-
tradiction between the upward cohabitation trend, the education related gradient,
and the shifting educational composition. The top to bottom diffusion of the de-
stigmatization and the increasing levels of education operate in the same direction,
and probably reinforce each other in accelerating the trend.
It is also interesting to note that the de-stigmatization profiles by level of educa-
tion are at present indicative of more permissiveness in a number of Latin American
countries than in the US. By 2005–06, the percentages never accepting homosexual-
ity are lower in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, i.e. the countries with the
largest white populations. With respect to the de-stigmatization of euthanasia, the
US is still in the vanguard, but matched by Uruguay and Chile.
To sum up, there are two strong arguments that are in favor of the hypothesis that
the trend reversal phase since the 1970s is fuelled by SDT factors as in Northern
America and Europe. First, cohabitation very clearly increased among the middle
and upper education groups, meaning that consensual unions are breaking loose
from their ethnic and economically disadvantaged substratum. And, secondly, the
de-stigmatization or “willingness”-factor operated entirely in the expected direc-
tion, both with respect to the positive tolerance gradient and the concurrent upward
compositional shift in education. In other words, the reversal phase since the 1970s
is largely induced by factors that are congruent with the SDT theory.

7 The Cohabitation Boom in Settings Without a Major

Ethno-Racial Component

A widespread view of the rise of cohabitation in Latin America is that it should not
come as a surprise, since these countries “always had it”. This standard view is
evidently oblivious to the steeply upward trends of cohabitation in Southern Brazil
and the Conosur (“Southern Cone” composed of Uruguay, Argentina and Chile),
i.e. the four areas that have only small indigenous or mixed populations, and are
largely made up of descendants of European immigrants. In this large Southern
Cone, the ethno-racial component of the negative cohabitation gradient by educa-
tion is largely absent. However, the negative gradient with education is equally in
evidence, but then mainly connected to pure social class distinctions among whites.
Moreover, due to their European origins, cohabitation was much less common in
these regions than in the rest of Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s. In other
words, there was no model at the onset that justified cohabitation, and the result was
a strongly negative view of it. Despite internal differences among the Conosur
countries in terms of their educational expansion, the development of welfare

15
At this point, the roles of mass media and of social media should obviously be mentioned (if not
stressed).
284 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

state provisions, political stability, and economic shocks, these areas have had the
largest increases in cohabitation since the 1970s of the entire American continent.
Particularly striking is the rise of cohabitation in Uruguay which trumps that in all
other countries. Moreover, the negative gradient with education in Uruguay had
almost disappeared in 2010. Hence, the classic argument that the ethno-racial
component in Latin America triggers off the cohabitation boom is incorrect: white
populations of European descent equally experienced the phenomenon, and even to
a more marked degree.
The other region with a strikingly steeply upward trend in cohabitation is Quebec
province in Canada. This is another area with a dominant white majority, who had
in addition guarded its French language and its strong allegiance to the Catholic
Church till the “Quiet Revolution” of the late 1960s. Even more striking is that the
education related profile of cohabitation in Quebec did not display the negative
gradient during the entire “reversal phase”. In fact, in 1986, the highest incidence of
cohabitation existed among women with a university education (see Figs. 3.2a and
3.2b in the Canadian), and the gradient becomes essentially flat thereafter as the
new behavior spreads very rapidly to the rest of the Quebec population. This
occurred concurrently with a major secularization wave and the demise of Catholic
authority. Furthermore, Quebec did not experience any major economic setbacks as
the Conosur countries did, so that the “crisis” hypothesis has no empirical ground-
ing in this part of Canada. The case of Quebec is a perfect, if not an extreme exam-
ple of a Western European pattern of the SDT. But one could also argue that, in
terms of cohabitation levels and lack of social stratification differentials, “Uruguay
became the Quebec of Latin America”.

8 Patterns of Entry into Cohabitation and Mixed Types

At various points it has been stressed that traditional patterns of cohabitation with
either an ethno-racial or a plain social class origin and the new SDT-type of cohabi-
tation have also produced blended types. Such intermediate types can be studied
from different angles. Esteve et al. (2012) use the characteristic of residence in an
extended household, as opposed to the formation of a nuclear household, as a crite-
rion for evaluating the maintenance of traditional form of marriage and cohabita-
tion. Covre-Sussai et al. (2015) use DHS surveys to construct a three-way typology
of cohabiting women depending on the maternity paths followed prior to the union
and after cohabitation. Grace and Sweeney (2014) focus on the onset of sexual
activity of adolescents and young adult women in Central America and the conse-
quences for entering into a consensual or marital union.
The Esteve et al. study compares the percentages of women 25–29 in extended
or composite households (as opposed to nuclear households) for cohabiting cou-
ples, married couples, cohabiting mothers, married mothers and single mothers.
Again census data archived in IPUMS files are used. Of the 13 countries considered,
three Andean ones, i.e. Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, had the highest co-residence
10 Cohabitation: The Pan-America View 285

with parents or others for both cohabiting and married women 25–29. In these
countries the percentages were similar for these two categories and situated between
50 and 60 %. Also for women with children, co-residence with parents or others
remained high at around 30 %, and again with little difference between cohabiting
and married mothers. Evidently, in these countries traditional co-residence in
extended households is still very common, and there is no distinction between
cohabiting and married women. The next group is made up of Cuba, Panama, Puerto
Rico, Venezuela and Colombia, with 40–50 % of cohabiting women 25–29 residing
in extended households. However these countries exhibit more diverging figures for
percentages of married women in extended households. In Cuba, more married
women than cohabiting women live together with parents or others (51.3 % vs.
44.7). By contrast, in Puerto Rico, co-residence is much more common for childless
cohabiting women than for married ones (41.9 % vs. 14.6). In the other countries of
the group, there are also more cohabiting women in extended households, but the
difference with the married women are less pronounced (around 10 percentage
points). Apparently in these countries the economic situation plays a prominent role
in determining the outcome for childless cohabitors, with more precarious situa-
tions for them leading to prolonged residence with parents or others. For cohabiting
and married mothers, however, the marital status distinction vanishes. Evidently,
cohabitors split off from the extended family a bit later and upon the birth of a child.
In the remaining countries, i.e. Mexico, Costa Rica, and Chile, co-residence in an
extended household for childless cohabiting women drops below 40 % and in Brazil
and Argentina even further below 30 %. In all these instances, co-residence with
parents or kin for married women is lower, thereby again illustrating that the more
precarious situations of cohabiting women are to some degree compensated by pro-
longed residence in the family of origin.16 Hence, there is again a geographic clus-
tering of the patterns with (i) an Andean form in which both cohabitation and
marriage are most commonly occurring with prolonged co-residence with kin, (ii) a
Central American and Caribbean one with lower overall co-residence, and with
more cohabitating than married women staying in the extended family, and (iii) a
more diluted pattern with less co-residence with kin among cohabitors and much
less among married women.
In these respects, the contrast with European patterns of residence is striking.
The Western and Northern European cohabitors and single mothers rarely derive
support from co-residence in extended families, since the European historical pat-
tern is overwhelmingly that of neolocal residence of nuclear families. Hence, there
is a major type of cohabitation with co-residence in extended families in Latin
America that is completely distinct from the European or US and Canadian pattern.
This contrast is plainly rooted in the different historical patterning of household
formation, spanning at least over several centuries.
The Covre-Sussai study is based on the 2005-2010DHS surveys in eight coun-
tries, and uses latent class analysis and retrospective data to construct a typology of

16
Co-residence with parents or others is much higher for single mothers. Except for Puerto Rico
(40 %), the percentages range between 57 (Bolivia) and 82 (Chile) in the other countries.
286 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

cohabiting women (all ages). The classification criteria are the age at the start of
cohabitation, the number of children and the ages at motherhood (1st birth),
pre-cohabitation pregnancy or not, and currently living together with partner or not.
Controls are introduced for age and education. The results indicate that between a
traditional form and a modern form there is also a mixed group. The traditional
group has the earliest age at the start of cohabitation (typically before age 19), and
had children before the age of 20. They are concentrated among the younger women
(younger than 26), women with primary education only and resident in the
Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras. In other words, the typology also
picks up the Caribbean and Central American pattern of cohabitation. The contrast-
ing group (“the innovative group” according to the author) has a later age at entrance
in cohabitation and of motherhood (over 20), had no pre-union pregnancy, and the
highest incidence of still being childless. This type is most common among women
with secondary education. Brazil has the highest proportion of this “innovative”
type (43 %), but in all the other countries the incidence is between 30 and 38 %. The
intermediate type in Covre-Sussai’s analysis resembles the more modern one. The
main difference is that they all had a pre-union pregnancy and no childlessness, but
otherwise their profiles are similar to the “innovative” group. This intermediate
group has the smallest occurrence in the Central American and Caribbean countries,
and also a smaller presence in Brazil,17 but was more common (again about a third)
in Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Guyana. Besides capturing an educational differ-
ence, the typology also identifies an Andean pattern as being distinct from the
Central American-Caribbean one.
A further study of the life-course unfolding in Central America (Grace and
Sweeney 2014) focuses on the adolescent and young adult stages (ages 12–24) in
Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Data stem from the DHS and RHS surveys
from 2001 to 2009. The authors use an event history analysis of competing risks for
entering a consensual union or marriage. At this point we must recall that the Central
American region harbors many populations that already had a high to very high
incidence of cohabitation to start with and still have the earliest ages for women at
entering a union (Bozon et al. 2009). Hence, it comes as no surprise that the new
SDT-form of cohabitation adds little to the already high percentages in consensual
unions. Also, as expected, the analysis brings out that the start of a sexual relation-
ship and potential pregnancy spur on the formation of a union at very young ages,
i.e. before age 18 (Ibidem). However, by staying in school longer, the onset of sex-
ual relations is delayed, and later on, further education is again linked to a higher
probability of entering a marriage. But there is also an important ethnic effect:
Mayan women in Guatemala have a greater likelihood of entering marriage, even at
young ages, than women in the other two countries. As already indicated, this
matches the much lower incidence of cohabitation of the Mayas of Yucatan in
Mexico. In Honduras and Nicaragua, by contrast, the early onset of sexual activity

17
Brazil appears to be the most “innovative” in this analysis, but this could be due to the large white
population in the densely settled south of the country.
10 Cohabitation: The Pan-America View 287

strongly increases the probability of entering a consensual union and has little
impact on the likelihood of marrying.
These three examples clearly bring out the heterogeneity within Latin America
in patterns of partnership formation. In addition, they elucidate the differences with
respect to family context and possibilities for co-residence with parents and kin.
And, thirdly, historical factors associated with ethnicity are emerging again, even
within much smaller regions such as Central America.

9 The Unfolding of a Latin American Duality: Expanding

SDT and Persistence of the Pattern of Disadvantage

The original conceptualization of the SDT three decades ago (Lesthaeghe and van
de Kaa 1986) was essentially the description of a Northern and Western European
phenomenon. The SDT-theory had two central components: the “non-conformist”
aspect, referring to the non-marital union formation and parenthood, and the “post-
ponement” aspect, referring to the postponement of marriages and parenthood to
much later ages than recorded in Europe during the 1960s.18 In this European con-
ceptualization, effective contraceptive methods disconnected the link between the
start of sexual activity and marriage, and also the rise of cohabitation lead to the
postponement of parenthood. Hence, the “non-conformist” and the “postponement”
parts were very closely linked in time in that part of the world. The same was also
observed in the US and Canada. Later on, however, it became more obvious that
these two dimensions did not necessarily have the same determinants. The ide-
ational changes in emancipation or expressive values and in ethics were more
strongly predictive of the “non-conformist” part than of the “fertility postponement”
part of the SDT.19 In fact the relationship with values orientations operated the other
way: it was parenthood that systematically altered these values in the conservative
direction (Surkyn and Lesthaeghe 2004). Moreover, as the SDT spread beyond the
Northern and Western European sphere, it became even more evident that the two
aspects could be disconnected in time as well (Lesthaeghe 2014).
The Southern European pattern constitutes a second variant of the SDT. These
countries had started their fertility postponement and fertility levels dipped far
below replacement level without any signs of emerging cohabitation. The initial
reactions in Spain and Italy to the SDT-theory was “not us, we’re different”, and
after the fall of Communism, identical reactions were voiced in Central and Eastern
Europe. Also there, fertility dropped precipitously as a result of massive postpone-
ment. After the turn of the Century, however, cohabitation did rise in these parts of
Europe as well. The outcome is that with very few exceptions, European populations

18
van de Kaa also added the issue of replacement migration to the SDT in subsequent
publications.
19
This point emerged very clearly from Karel Neels’ analysis of Belgian regional data and in sub-
sequent discussions with him.
288 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

have had sub-replacement fertility for up to four decades, and rising levels of
cohabitation as well, with the Nordic countries presumably reaching an upper
ceiling. Marriage has obviously not disappeared, but when it occurs, it is at a later
stage in the life-cycle and no longer of necessity at the occasion of a first birth.
As in Southern Europe, also in Japan the postponement transition of marriage
and of fertility had already ran much of its course prior to the first signs of emerging
cohabitation. It is only several years after the turn of the Century that demographers
realized that Japan too was witnessing the emergence of consensual unions (Tsuya
2006; Raymo et al. 2009). Furthermore, also data for Taiwan illustrated the same
phenomenon (Lesthaeghe 2010). Admittedly, the incidence of cohabitation is still
lower than in Europe or in Latin America, but these examples nevertheless illustrate
that much more strongly “patriarchal” societies in the Far East are not immune to
the manifestation of the “non-conformist” part of the SDT.20 It should be noted that
maternity without marriage is still exceptional in Japan, whereas this is no longer so
in Southern Europe and particularly not in Spain and Portugal.
In the Latin American situation, the sequence is reversed: as documented in this
volume the cohabitation boom developed without the postponement effect of union
formation and of fertility. This constitutes a third variant of the SDT. Fertility levels
declined substantially since the 1970s in a number of countries, but this occurred
without a major shift in its timing. In 1970, total fertility rates were above three
children in all Latin American countries with Uruguay as the sole exception.
By 2010 all countries but Bolivia, Guatemala, and Haiti were below three children
per woman. A number of countries even dipped below replacement fertility:
Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador and Uruguay (CELADE 2013). Despite such
significant declines in fertility levels, women’s mean ages at first union and at first
birth remained quite stable across cohorts and time. This has been a puzzling
characteristic of Latin American family systems that sets them apart from western
countries in which the “non-conformist” and “postponement” transitions occurred
simultaneously.
This feature of stable mean ages at union formation and ages at maternity has
attracted a fair amount of interest (e.g. Fussell and Palloni 2004; Esteve et al. 2013;
Castro-Martín and Juarez 1995). Also, improvements in education were not accom-
panied by an expected overall tempo shift in fertility. Rather, opposite tendencies
occurred at the extremes of the education spectrum. Recent analyses of census and
survey data indicate that the women with tertiary education tend to postpone their
first birth in a number of more developed regions, but also that teenage fertility is
rising in the lower and middle education groups (Rosero Bixby et al. 2009; Esteve
et al. 2013). Chile and Uruguay show the largest increases in childlessness among
the best educated women, followed by Brazil and Mexico. In the Sao Paulo state of
Brazil an increase in fertility among women 30+ is being noted among the wealthier

20
In many other Asian countries there have been very large rises in ages at first marriage for
women. Expanding education is clearly a major component of that story, but there are to our
knowledge still no studies that look into the matter of a possible rise of cohabitation. This also
applies to the PR of China.
10 Cohabitation: The Pan-America View 289

strata (Berquo et al. 2014), which equally points in the direction of postponement
and subsequent recuperation at later ages. These features are in line with the SDT
scenario.
High teenage fertility, even before the age of 18, constitutes the other side of the
coin and points in the direction of a persistent pattern of disadvantage. The DHS
survey data for 12 countries show high and stable proportions of women with chil-
dren by age 18 across cohorts (Esteve and Florez 2014). For some authors high
teenage fertility is regarded as the main reason for the stable and low mean age at
maternity (Rodríguez Vignoli 2008). Early ages of starting sexual activity in combi-
nation with deficient contraception among young women account for this to a sig-
nificant degree. However, all indicators show that the use of contraception has
increased throughout Latin America, before and after controls for factors such as
education, age at sexual début, current age, among others. Therefore, there should
be additional explanations as well. Rodríguez points to three additional factors:
(i) weak autonomy for young women, (ii) a lack of economic opportunities for them
and hence low opportunity costs associated with early maternity, and (iii) the avail-
ability of family support (e.g. co-residence).
The overall outcome for Latin America is the duality with increasing postpone-
ment of first births among an educated elite and high and often rising adolescent and
teenage fertility among the most disadvantaged parts of the population (López-Gay
and Esteve 2014). Among the former, the full SDT pattern is currently unfolding,
whereas the latter have increased cohabitation in combination with very early fertil-
ity schedules. It remains to be seen to what extent the central category with second-
ary education will be following the elite. If they do so, a top-down pattern of fertility
postponement would be followed, leading to lower period rates of total fertility in a
number of better educated countries. However, a tenacious persistence of high teen-
age fertility pattern is highly likely, even when overall educational levels continue
to increase. In fact, despite the striking advances in contraceptive technology,
such a history of high teenage fertility has been observed in the US until the recent
turn of the Century. Hence, high teenage fertility is an additional feature which sets
the Latin American and Caribbean countries apart from most of Europe and the
Far East.

10 Final Note

This entire volume deals with evolutions in partnership formation which are still in
full progress. Admittedly, in some countries that evolution advanced with a big leap,
whereas in others the trends have been more gradual. But in all cases these trends
are following a firm course, irrespective of the economic ups and downs. What we
are witnessing is not just “a temporary aberration” but a genuine systemic alteration
covering an entire continent. The Americas, as opposed to many Asian societies and
Africa, are now following in the European footsteps, be it with their own distinct
and path-dependent characteristics associated with regionally varying historical
antecedents.
290 R.J. Lesthaeghe and A. Esteve

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