1

The “Second Demographic Transition” Features in Latin America: the 2010 Update.

Albert Esteve, Joan Garcia-Roman, Ron Lesthaeghe, Antonio Lopez-Gay.

Centre d’Estudis Demografics, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.

(version March 13, 2012)

(Correspondence to: Ron Lesthaeghe – RLesthaeghe@yahoo.com)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to update earlier findings about the “Latin American cohabitation
boom” (Esteve et al., 2012a) concerning levels, spatial differences and education profiles of the
incidence of cohabitation by adding the results for the countries for which we have the micro-
data of the 2010 census round. In addition, we also want to see to what extent the other
“Second Demographic Transition” (SDT) dimension, i.e. postponement of parenthood has
emerged on the Latin American scene after the turn of the century, and which social strata are
already exhibiting this feature as well. As before, we are mainly focusing on successive
incoming cohorts of women when they reach the age group 25-29, when education is
completed for virtually all of them, and when crucial choices re the type of partnership and
progression to parenthood are being made. Both trends and social differentials of the two
features, cohabitation and postponement of parenthood, reveal that growing segments of
Latin American societies exhibit the full range of SDT characteristics. Cohabitation continues to
spread rapidly, initially starting from the lower educated groups (bottom up diffusion),
whereas postponement spreads from the top down. In fact, the lower educated are finishing
the historical fertility transition simultaneously with the better educated starting the SDT
postponement transition. The implication of this double-pronged fertility squeeze is that more
Latin American countries are likely to reach below-replacement period fertility levels in the
near future.

1. Introduction

The phenomenon of the so called “second demographic transition” (SDT) has two major
components. The first one is the “non-conformist” component which is made up of features
that were fairly rare in the 1960s and 1970s and that were generally regarded negatively at
that time. Such features were divorce, unmarried cohabitation, and parenthood among
cohabitors. The second component of the SDT is the “postponement transition” with delayed
union formation and delayed parenthood as characteristics. In the northwestern European
sphere, both components developed more or less simultaneously, and the early versions of the
SDT theory (e.g. Lesthaeghe and van de Kaa 1986, van de Kaa 1987) treated them as parts of
just one cohesive entity. However, the spread of the SDT beyond northern and western Europe
illustrated that the two components are not necessarily linked that closely. For instance, the
postponement transition clearly preceded the “non-conformist” one in the Mediterranean
countries and in the Far East (Japan, Taïwan) (Lesthaeghe 2010), where there were barely
traces of the existence of consensual unions to start with. Moreover, even in western
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European countries and in the USA the spatial correlations by province or county between the
two components are not always significant i (Lesthaeghe and Neidert 2006, Lesthaeghe and
Lopez 2013). The Latin American situation may present the opposite time sequence, with the
spread of consensual unions and unmarried motherhood occurring well before the general
postponement of union formation and of parenthood in general. The Latin American
“cohabitation boom” and the rise of unmarried motherhood since the 1970s has been well
documented for virtually all Latin American countries (e.g. Castro-Martin 2002, Castro-Martin
et al. 2011, Esteve et al. 2012a, 2012b). The fact that consensual unions were traditionally
much more common in Latin America than in Mediterranean Europe and the Far East certainly
facilitated the rapid deployment of cohabitation after 1970 on that continent. But, what is
currently unfolding with respect to the other SDT-component, i.e. delayed parenthood? The
literature until the 1990s suggests that there was not much of a delayed union formation
(Fussell and Palloni 2004, Esteve et al. 2013) prior to the turn of the century, despite the
adverse economic conditions of the 1980s and early 1990s. In fact, if there was later marriage,
it was compensated by a longer period of premarital cohabitation. Hence, the timing of union
formation was until then not a major factor capable of producing a delay in the transition to
parenthood. By contrast, Latin American countries witnessed a vast expansion of female
education over the last 40 years, and this may have been a much more potent driving force
behind an incipient “postponement transition” than the 1980s crises.

In the present article we are able to present an update for two indicators. First, we take the
percentage of women 25-29 in cohabitation relative to all women of that age in a union (i.e.
cohabitation + marriage) as the indicator for the further spread of the “non-conformist” aspect
of the SDT. Here the update mainly consists of adding the results of the 2010 census round to
our earlier presentation (Esteve et al. 2012a). This allows for a follow up of the regional picture
within countries and of the spread of cohabitation by educational group, and by extension by
social class as well. Second, we use the indicators pertaining to parities zero and 3+ children
respectively to detect the onset of the postponement transition and the completion of the
classic fertility decline (as part of the “first demographic transition” or FDT). Again, we can add
data for the 2010 census round, document regional trends and inspect changes by educational
class as well. Furthermore, the concentration on the age group 25-29 permits the comparison
of successive cohorts at an age for which the education is already completed and in which
patterns of family formation become clear.

2. Recent trends in cohabitation: convergence to higher levels.

In this section we limit ourselves to seven countries for which the results of the 2010 census
round are in the public domain and for which we have the relevant information. For the other
countries, we refer to Esteve et al. (2012a) for the earlier results up till the turn of the century.
As before, much of the materials presented here could be computed with the help of the
harmonized University of Minnesota IPUMS data files (Minnesota Population Center 2011).
Other results stem from the CELADE data files or directly from census micro-data provided by
national institutes of statistics. The exact sources are given in appendix Table A1.
 3

As is well documented by now, marked contrasts existed among Latin American countries with
respect to the historical levels of cohabitation. These were much higher to start with in the
Caribbean, in much of Central America, the Northern Andean countries, and along the Atlantic
coast in areas which have had slave economies. By contrast, cohabitation was low in Mexico,
Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, and in areas with large European populations such Chile, Argentina,
Uruguay and southern Brazil. For instance, as documented in Table 1 and Figure 1, in Panama
more than half of all women 25-29 in unions in 1970 were cohabiting, whereas this was less
than 10 percent in Brazil and Argentina. By 2010, however all countries for which we have
data, except Mexico, have levels in excess of 40 percent. No doubt, Mexico, which has been a
latecomer in this respect, will cross that boundary in the very near future. But the most
spectacular rises in cohabitation are witnessed in Argentina and Uruguay. Several decades ago
nobody could have possibly imagined that these countries would now converge to the level of
cohabitation of the “record holder”, i.e. Panama. And, yet, Uruguay has already crossed the 70
percent level and Argentina will soon follow as well.

Table 1: Percent cohabiting among women 25-29 in a union, various census rounds 1970-2010.

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Argentina 13.1 14.9 25.8 48.7 66.6
Brazil 7.2 13.3 25.2 45.5 50.0
Costa Rica 17.0 20.1 38.1 48.5
Ecuador 27.2 29.9 31.3 41.5 47.4
Mexico 16.6 16.2 25.0 37.1
Panama 58.4 54.9 58.8 70.2 73.9
Uruguay 9.6 14.1 23.6 51.2 70.8
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The speeding up of the increase after 1990 and especially after 2000 clearly dispels the earlier
hypothesis that the Latin American “cohabitation boom” was caused by the economic crises
and the hyperinflation of the 1970s and especially 1980s. Not only was there no close
correlation between the onset and tempo of the take-off of the cohabitation trend and the
timing of inflation spells, but several countries simply had barely any increase in cohabitation
at that time (e.g. Mexico, Ecuador, Panama). By contrast, the astonishing tempo acceleration
in several countries (here: Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Brazil and even Mexico) occurs after
1990 and continues uninterruptedly after the turn of the century, when the economic situation
had improved considerably and when female secondary education continued to expand.

The picture of the trends by smaller spatial units within each country is given in Figure 2. In all
countries, the regions were ordered from low to high levels of cohabitation for the earliest
census round, and subsequently this ordering was maintained for later dates as well. In this
fashion, the linear fits for successive census round indicate whether the regions at the tail of
the distribution have been catching up at a higher tempo, or whether the “vanguard” regions
are advancing faster, or whether the whole distribution has simply shifted upward in a
homogeneous way (parallel lines). For the seven countries in this update, Panama exhibits the
clearest case in which the upper tail regions are bumping against the saturation level (over 90
percent!) and in which the regions at the lower end have been catching up, despite the fact
that they had high historical levels to start with. Argentina is the next case with a higher speed
of increase for regions at the lower end, but then, the overall increase for the entire
distribution is by far the dominant feature. This is even more in evidence for Uruguay, with a
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uniform and universal cohabitation boom for young women during the first decade of this
century. In the other four countries, the progression rate of cohabitation is less spectacular
than in Argentina and Uruguay, but all regions participated more or less in a uniform fashion.
In Brazil, the vanguard regions initially moved further up, but the tail end has been catching up
during the last decade, so that he latest gradient runs parallel to the earliest one. This implies
that the cohabitation boom has now fully reached the white population in the southern
Brazilian states as well. In Costa Rica and Ecuador, the initial distribution was more bimodal,
with two clusters of low and high levels respectively. This bimodality started to weaken from
the 1990s onward, and by 2010 there is just one smooth regional gradient, which implies that
growth has been highest in the center of the initial distribution.

Figure 2: Patterns in the rise of the share of cohabitation among all unions of women 25-29 in regions of
Latin American countries, various census rounds, 1970-2010

Argentina Brazil
100% 100%
90% 90%
80% 80%
70% 70%
60% 60%
50% 50%
40% 40%
30% 30%
20% 20%
10% 10%
0% 0%
-10% -10%

Costa Rica Ecuador

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100% 100%
90% 90%
80% 80%
70% 70%
60% 60%
50% 50%
40% 40%
30% 30%
20% 20%
10% 10%
0% 0%
-10% -10%

Mexico 100% Panama*

90%
100% 80% 100%
70%
90% 60% 90%
50%
80% 40% 80%
30%
70% 20% 70%
10%
60% 0% 60%
-10%
50% 50%
40% 40%
30% 30%
20% 20%
10% 10%
0% 0%
-10% -10%

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Uruguay ** 100%
90%
80%
100% 70%
90% 60%
50%
80% 40%
30%
70% 20%
10%
60% 0%
-10%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
-10%

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

*Because this is an update of results, we have chosen to present data for 75 units in Panama for the period 1990-2010 rather than to
present only 11 units for the period 1970-2010.

** Here the 2000 census round data for Uruguay pertain to 1996, and the latest series pertain to 2011, so that the large increment is
really over a period of 15 rather than 10 years.

Source : computed from IPUMS data files.

Does all of this mean that there is a grand convergence to levels of say 70 to 80 percent of
women aged 25-29 opting for longer term cohabitation instead of marriage? Judging from the
2010 percentages, this cannot be ruled out anymore. In all countries, except Mexico, the
 7

regions at the upper end of the distribution are already crossing the 70 percent level, and we
would speculate that what is possible for the white population of Uruguay is equally possible
for whites elsewhere in Latin America.

The educational gradient of cohabitation has been another issue of interest in the literature
(e.g. Kenney and Goldstein 2012). Commonly, negative education gradients (cohabitation rates
declining with advancing education) have been interpreted as proof of the fact that
cohabitation is only the outcome of economic disadvantage of lower social classes or of an
economic crisis (e.g. in the 1990s in the European former Communist countries), and not the
result of any cultural change as suggested by the SDT-theory. ii Indeed, if one were to take a
single Latin American gradient at any point in time, such a negative gradient would be in
evidence. But then, the cohabitation gradient in Latin America is a negative one with
education for many other, mostly historical reasons. It stems inter alia from the fact that
slavery prevented marriage and that indigenous populations had totally different kinship
structures. Hence, there has been a pre-existing “baseline” pattern of a racial and class
differential in this respect, which has nothing to do with economic or cultural events after
1970. The proper way to infer anything from an educational gradient is to study the evolution
of its shape over time. Only then can we properly begin to answer the questions of (i) who
departed first and most from such a historical “baseline”, and (ii) to what degree and how fast
cohabitation has spread to other groups in the population.

Before discussing the evolution of the educational gradient for the census rounds since 1970
we need to introduce a major caveat. Normally, education gradients are presented for fixed
classes of levels of schooling, but when considering time series with fixed classes one has to be
aware of educational expansions. This is particularly relevant or Latin American countries
where female education levels have increased very significantly since the 1970s. In terms of
social class, the lower classes would reach full primary and partial secondary education as time
advances, and the upper classes would not be the only ones anymore entering university
education. The magnitude of the education shifts for women 25-29 in the period 1970-2010
can be appreciated by focusing on the percentages with complete secondary education or
more. These data are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Percentages of women with completed secondary education or more in Latin

American countries, 1970-2011.

1970-75 1976-85 1990-96 2000-06 2007-11

Argentina 6.6 15.9 27.5 53.2
Bolivia 7.9 24.6 37.9
Brazil 7.3 17.8 27.3 34.2 57.2
Chile 12.7 30.1 41.8 55.9
Colombia 7.5 25.4 31.6 55.8
Costa Rica 8.2 15.2 31.6
Cuba 59.0
Ecuador 8.5 20.9 33.9 37.6 52.3
 8

El Salvador 22.8 30.8

Mexico 2.6 22.6 30.6 41.2
Nicaragua 4.7 19.3 28.6
Panama 13.8 28.7 44.2 49.6
Peru 49.2 65.1
PuertoRico 40.7 65.6 78.7 85.1
Uruguay 21.6 33.4 41.9 60.4
Venezuela 3.2 13.3 18.7 27.4

During the early 1970s there were only two countries in Table 2, namely Puerto Rico and
Uruguay, with more than 20 percent of women 25-29 who had completed secondary
education or higher studies. After 2000, there is not a single country left with less than a fifth
of such more educated young women, and many have progressed to levels exceeding 50
percent. Despite this positive trend, there are still some remarkable differences between the
various countries.

With this caveat in mind, we can now turn to the educational gradients themselves and to
their evolution over time. The results of the shares of cohabitors among women 25-29 in a
union are shown on Figure 3 for various census rounds and again for countries for which we
have the 2010 results by educational level.

The first striking feature is that the shares of cohabitation have gone up in all education
groups. This holds, furthermore, in all countries considered here. But there are different types
of evolution. A first type is the one with the initial expansion of cohabitation occurring to a
greater degree among the less educated, but with a subsequent catching up of the better
educated groups, including those with university training. The best example of this type is
Brazil, which had a low and fairly flat 1970s “baseline” profile to start with. A strongly
contrasting second type is the one found in Panama, with a very pronounced historical
education and class profile of cohabitation at the onset. In this case, the evolution is strongly
“bottom up” with cohabitation spreading from the lower to the highest echelons of society,
even to the point that there are now 50 percent cohabitors among the university educated
compared to less than 20 percent 20 years ago. A third type is the one which is equally
“bottom up”, but with the more marked rises in the middle education categories. This is
presumably also the result of the educational expansion, with earlier lower class women
benefitting from increased schooling. The country that fits this picture is Ecuador. The last type
is the one where the initial negative gradients were modest and where the expansion of
cohabitation occurs more simultaneously in all education groups together. In this instance, the
slopes of the gradients remain negative, but they evolve in a parallel fashion. Costa Rica and
Mexico present such profile evolutions, but Uruguay is an extreme case in this respect. In the
latter country a major jump occurred during the last 15 years and this affected absolutely
everybody, to the point that the current education profile is almost flat at an astonishing 70
percent level.
 9

The general picture is clearly one of a “bottom up” diffusion of cohabitation given the initial,
historical negative education gradient. But from the 1970s onward and especially after 1990,
the pattern spread like wildfire to all other racial and social classes. Most of the increases
furthermore occurred during periods of positive economic growth and expansion of female
higher education, and not during the 1980s economic crises in these countries.

Finally, it is obvious that these changes can only be produced as the result of marked breaks in
the behavior of successive cohorts. In other words, we are witnessing another case of cohort
driven behavioral innovation. Hence, the follow up of cohabitors differentially moving into
marriage at older ages has to be analyzed by cohort and not in cross-sections iii.
 10

Figure 3: Share of cohabitation among all unions of women 25-29 by level of education, country and
census round.

Brazil Costa Rica

100% 100%

90% 90%

80% 80%

70% 70%

60% 60%
1970
1973
50% 1980 50%
1984
40% 1991 40% 2000
2000
30% 30% 2011
2010
20% 20%

10% 10%

0% 0%
Less than Primary Secondary University Less than Primary Secondary University
primary completed completed completed primary completed completed completed
completed completed

Ecuador Mexico
100% 100%

90% 90%

80% 80%

70% 70%

60% 60%
1974
1970
50% 1982 50%
1990
40% 1990 40% 2000
2000
30% 30% 2010
2010
20% 20%

10% 10%

0% 0%
Less than Primary Secondary University Less than Primary Secondary University
primary completed completed completed primary completed completed completed
completed completed

Panama Uruguay
100% 100%

90% 90%

80% 80%

70% 70%

60% 60%
1970
1975
50% 1980 50%
1985
40% 1990 40% 1996
2000
30% 30% 2010
2010
20% 20%

10% 10%

0% 0%
Less than Primary Secondary University Less than Primary Secondary University
primary completed completed completed primary completed completed completed
completed completed

3. The “postponement transition”: any signs of it ?

One of the remarkable features of the last decades of the 20 th Century was that the mean
ages of women at union formation and at first birth did not seem to increase in any
significant way despite the economic crises of the 1980s (Fussell and Palloni 2004, Rosero-
Bixby et al. 2009). In other words, the second dimension of the SDT, namely the
postponement transition, had not yet taken place before the early 90s. The first authors to
 11

spot the possibility of an incipient fertility postponement were Rosero-Bixby, Castro-

Martin and Martin-Garcia (2009) who, using vital registration and survey data,
documented a clear downward shift in the proportions reaching motherhood for the age
group 25-29 in several Latin American countries. The inspection of the census data on
children-ever-born as given in the IPUMS samples equally reveals that there were not
many increasing cases of childlessness in the age group 25-29 prior to the early 1990s, at
least not at the national level. Furthermore, matters were complicated by respondents not
reporting the number of children, and these unknowns could reach up to 15 percent for
women 25-29 in the earlier censuses. There are, however, good reasons to assume that
especially cases with zero children are miscoded as unknown (e.g. by leaving blanks on the
enumeration forms) (Vincent 1946, El Badry 1961). In such instances corrections can be
applied by using the Vincent-El Badry method (see Feeney, 1998) iv. In the later censuses
the problem essentially disappears, but in what follows, only such corrected parity
distributions will be analyzed for women 25-29.

The availability of a set of Latin American census results for 2010 reopens the question of
the possible start of a fertility postponement transition. By following the percentages of
women still childless in the age group 25-29 for all women, in a union or not, we can
detect the onset of a general postponement, which can also be due to a postponement in
the schedule of union formation. By limiting a second data series to women who have ever
been in a union (marriage or cohabitation) we are coming closer to capturing a genuine
fertility postponement transition.

Table 3: Percent women 25-29 still childless in Latin American countries, various censuses
1970-2011.

1970-77 1978-85 1990-97 1998-2005 2006-2011

Argentina 30.4 32.9 36.9
Bolivia 19.1 19.3 22.9
Brazil 29.5 28.3 29.2 30.8 39.9
Chile 15.6 26.1 27.2 31.4
Colombia 27.1 27.2 29.1 29.4
Costa Rica 22.1 22.2 25.9 36.1
Ecuador 18.8 20.6 23.9 23.4 24.8
El Salvador 25.6 26.4
Mexico 23.2 24.1 27.6 30.2
Nicaragua 15.5 14.7 17.5
Panama 17.7 21.0 24.5 26.1 28.3
Peru 26.3 33.3
PuertoRico 23.5 25.2 33.0
Uruguay 32.8 32.1 34.4 43.8
Venezuela 26.9 27.2 28.2
Source: Computed from IPUMS data files.
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Figure 4: Percent women 25-29 childless in Latin American countries, 1970-2011.

?
In Belgium and Spain, for instance, the maps of the “non-conformist”indicators of the SDT follow the
regional history of secularization, whereas the “postponement” indicators follow different spatial
patterns correlated with female higher education and overall higher female employment rates. In the
US, the vanguard states with respect to postponement are all in the North Atlantic zone, whereas those
leading with respect to cohabitation are typically liberal pacific and western states. Those at the tail of
both distributions are, however, identical (Southern, Appalachian, and conservative Mountain states).
ii
The debate on whether the rise in cohabitation in the former European Communist countries was a
reaction to the crisis of the 1990s replicating a pattern of disadvantage as in the USA versus a further
spread of the SDT beyond Western Europe and Scandinavia is still going on. However, recent analyses
with more detailed retrospective information gathered in surveys indicate that cohabitation was
increasing in a number of such countries well before 1990, and furthermore continued to increase after
the latest turn of the century as well (Puur et al. 2012). In other words, the pattern is similar to the one
in Latin America, where the rise of cohabitation equally occurred throughout all periods of contrasting
national economic conditions.
iii
This once more illustrates that cross-sectional synthetic indicators such as the singulate mean age at
marriage or total period first marriage or cohabitation rates will not properly represent the situation in
times of rapid change.
iv
This method worked well (see Garcia-Roman et al. 2012) except for Argentina 1970, where large
numbers of unknowns must have been at higher parities. As a result the data for Argentina 1970 are
omitted from our analysis.
 13

Table 3 and Figure 4 show the percentages of childlessness for all women 25-29. They illustrate
that the overall postponement transition could have begun before the turn of the century in
several countries, and probably in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Puerto Rico, Panama, Ecuador
and Colombia. The picture becomes much clearer after 2000: all 8 countries with data after
2006 show an increase in percentages still childless, and the increase is quite substantial in
Brazil, Costa Rica, Peru and especially Uruguay. More modest increases are recorded for
Mexico and Ecuador.

Table 4 and Figure 5 show the same percentages, but only for women 25-29 who have ever
been in a union. This limits the postponement to fertility more exclusively, and of course the
percentages will be lower than in the series for all women.

Table 4: Percent childless among women 25-29 who have ever been in a union, Latin American
countries, 1970-2011.
 14

1970-77 1978-85 1990-97 1998-2005 2006-2011

Argentina 13.6 15.6 15.5
Bolivia 6.6 6.6 6.6
Brazil 8.6 10.4 10.7 14.4 23.6
Chile 4.3 7.8 10.3 13.0
Colombia 7.7 8.2 10.2 12.4
Costa Rica 6.6 7.0 11.2 17.7
Ecuador 5.2 5.9 7.7 9.1 10.3
El Salvador 11.7 9.2
Mexico 9.1 7.5 9.2 10.7
Nicaragua 4.9 5.8
Panama 7.5 8.7 8.9 10.2 13.7
Peru 6.8 10.2
PuertoRico 9.5 11.3 15.6
Uruguay 15.5 16.4 21.9
Venezuela 11.4 9.7 10.7

With these data, three groups seem to appear. First, there are countries with no or hardly any
fertility postponement. These are Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Venezuela. The middle
group contains countries with only a modest and just a recent increase in percentages
childless, i.e. Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico and Panama. The third group contains countries with
more sustained and more substantial rises: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Puerto
Rico and Uruguay. For this latter group one can be certain by now that the postponement
phase of the SDT has begun.

In contrast to the “bottom up” spread of cohabitation, both the overall and fertility
postponement transitions are clearly initiated by the more educated women. The data in Table
5 show the percentages childless of women 25-29 ever in a union with a university education,
and Table 6 gives the analogous figures for such women with completed secondary education,
but only for the countries with a clearly rising trend. In virtually all countries we could not yet
detect any rises in childlessness for women with no more than completed primary education.
 15

For the majority of countries most rises in childlessness among the university educated women
25-29 ever in a union seem to take off during the 1990s, but these rises were earlier in
Uruguay, Chile, Puerto Rico and possibly also in Costa Rica. By contrast, the rises are still
modest in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, but clearly catching up as well. Mexico,
El Salvador and Panama occupy the middle ground.

The fertility postponement among women 25-29 with a complete secondary education,
however, is not yet a universal feature, but limited to a subset of countries. These are not
surprisingly the countries which had the more substantial increases in both general and
fertility postponement for all education groups together, namely Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica,
Uruguay and presumably also Peru.
 16

Table 5: Percent childless women 25-29 ever in a union with university education; Latin
American countries 1970-2011.

1970-77 1978-85 1990-97 1998-2005 2006-2011

Argentina 34.3 43.2 51.9
Bolivia 15.9 12.5 23.1
Brazil 35.9 30.5 36.8 48.0 56.3
Chile 14.1 25.3 34.1 45.1
Colombia 27.3 27.3 31.0 34.1
Costa Rica 14.9 17.8 34.3 44.2
Ecuador 21.6 14.2 21.0 27.5 25.8
El Salvador 29.1 35.5
Mexico 21.1 25.3 32.1 34.0
Nicaragua 13.0 17.9 24.4
Panama 15.7 28.2 31.8 34.8
Peru 19.3 27.7
PuertoRico 27.1 24.2 33.7
Uruguay 32.9 46.2 52.3 72.0
Venezuela 31.1 32.7 38.7

Table 6: Percent childless women 25-29 ever in a union with completed secondary education;
selected Latin American countries 1970-2011.

1970-77 1982-85 1990-97 1998-2005 2006-2011

Brazil 20.4 21.4 20.3 26.1 29.0
Chile 8.9 13.2 15.4 17.9
Costa Rica 16.7 13.3 18.9 23.9
Peru 10.0 12.5
Uruguay 24.0 23.5 36.5 33.1

The start of the postponement transition at the higher echelons of Latin American societies is
not the sole feature in the fertility evolution of these countries during the period considered
here. In fact, the accompanying phenomenon is the coming to a closure of the first
demographic transition (FDT) with regards to family size limitation. Hence, FDT and SDT
features are occurring simultaneously as a double-pronged squeeze on Latin American fertility.
But, they are also occurring in different social strata: the lower ones are closing the FDT phase
whilst the higher ones have started or are starting the SDT postponement transition.

The data on the declining percentages women 25-29 with 3+ children are reported in Table 7.
During the early 1980s, there was only one country with about 20 percent of women 25-29
having 3 or more children, namely Uruguay. In all the other countries, the figure was at least
double this Uruguayan level. However, from then onwards, there is a precipitous decline, so
that many countries by now dip to approximately the 20 percent level (Argentina, Colombia,
 17

Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama) and even to levels of only 10 to 15 percent (Brazil,
Chile, Costa Rica, Peru and Uruguay).

Table 7: Percent women 25-29 with 3 or more children, Latin American countries 1970-2011.

1970-77 1978-85 1990-97 1998-2005 2006-2011

Argentina 23.9 23.9 20.3
Bolivia 49.5 39.9 36.4
Brazil 43.1 32.6 24.9 19.6 12.7
Chile 40.9 22.2 15.2 9.7
Colombia 44.4 29.6 23.9 18.4
Costa Rica 44.4 32.3 22.5 11.6
Ecuador 52.5 43.6 33.7 27.3 22.5
El Salvador 33.2 22.7
Mexico 55.7 35.5 24.5 20.2
Nicaragua 63.3 49.3 33.2
Panama 53.5 40.2 32.0 26.5 22.6
Peru 30.3 15.4
PuertoRico 40.5 27.4 22.6
Uruguay 20.7 18.6 15.3 10.6
Venezuela 46.6 29.7 25.2

Another way to illustrate this double-pronged squeeze on fertility is to put the latest available
percentages of women 25-29 with zero and with 3+ children side by side, as done in Table 8 for
censuses of the 21st Century. The ratio between both (zero/3+) clearly illustrates where these
recent cohorts are at ages 25-29 with respect to this “double transition”. In Nicaragua and
Bolivia, childless women are still a minority (ratios below unity), and the dominant issue is still
the completion of the FDT fertility transition. In Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama and Venezuela
there is already a slight majority of childless women (ratios just over unity). In Argentina,
Colombia and Mexico the majority of childless women is higher still (ratios between 1.5 and
2.0), and in Peru there are more than twice the number of nulliparous women 25-29 compared
to women with 3 or more children. The vanguard with as good as completed FDT and
advancing SDT is characterized by ratios in excess of three times more childless women, and is
composed of Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and above all, Uruguay.

Obviously, these cohorts have by no means completed their fertility as yet, but the next
question is to what extent the “postponers” will recuperate the hitherto foregone fertility at
later ages during the reproductive life course. The issue of the degree of recuperation after age
30 is a central one in SDT countries in deciding how far cohort and period indicators of fertility
dip below replacement level (Sobotka et al. 2010) v. If the vanguard countries mentioned above
would follow the European Mediterranean pattern (Portugal, Spain, Italy) then a substantial
dip in period total fertility rates would follow. If by contrast, women would catch up on earlier
postponed births, as in Western Europe (e.g. France, Low Countries, UK) then period fertility
rates would remain closer to the two children level.
 18

Table 8: Percentages women 25-29 with respectively zero and 3 or more children, latest Latin
American censuses of the 21st century.

Ratio
zero 3+ zero/3+
Argentina 36.9 20.3 1.82
Bolivia 22.9 36.4 0.63
Brazil 39.9 12.7 3.14
Chile 31.4 9.7 3.24
Colombia 29.4 18.4 1.60
Costa Rica 36.1 11.6 3.11
Ecuador 24.8 22.5 1.10
El Salvador 26.4 22.7 1.16
Mexico 30.2 20.2 1.50
Nicaragua 17.5 33.2 0.53
Panama 28.3 22.6 1.25
Peru 33.3 15.4 2.16
PuertoRico* na na na
Uruguay 43.8 10.6 4.13
Venezuela 28.2 25.2 1.12

*Ratio for Puerto Rico 1990 was 1.46.

4. Conclusions.

In two earlier contributions we have documented the very considerable rise in unmarried
cohabitation in Latin America since the 1970s and the broader family arrangements of
cohabiting women and unpartnered mothers (Esteve et al. 2012a, 2012b). In this third
part, we have been able to show that the cohabitation boom is not yet over, and that
several countries witnessed major increases in cohabitation among the most recent cohort
of women reaching the ages of 25-29 in the 21 st century under far better economic
conditions than in the 1980s. At present we have also added another subject to the
investigation, namely the onset of the so called “postponement transition”, which is the
other dimension of the SDT.

Several points emerge. Firstly, Latin American countries continue to vary substantially, and
much has to do with their educational trends and existing class/race composition. In other
words, there is a high degree of heterogeneity between them and within each of them.
The “non-conformist” aspect of the SDT, captured here by percentages cohabiting, is
clearly a “bottom up” affair starting from a historical baseline pattern of cohabitation being
v
It should be noted that several Latin American countries have already reached period total fertility
rates (TFR) lower than 2 children by 2010. According to the World Bank data base this synthetic fertility
measure dipped below the replacement level in Cuba (1.5), Brazil, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and Chile (all
1.8). In Uruguay the TFR has come down to 2.0, and in Colombia to 2.1. Just above period replacement
level were Argentina (2.2), El Salvador (2.2). Mexico (2.3), Ecuador (2.4) and Peru, Venezuela and
Panama (all 2.5) and Nicaragua (2.6) are still at the upper end, whereas Bolivia (around 3.0) is an outlier.
 19

a lower class feature and being unpopular among the bourgeoisie. This is now increasingly
a thing of the past: in all countries studied here, cohort after cohort, the better educated
women have equally adopted the pattern of premarital cohabitation, and they are largely
doing so within the context of a nuclear household (cf. Esteve et al. 2012b). This “non-
conformist” part of the SDT is obviously not yet complete, as there is still ample room for
convergence to levels in the vicinity of 70 to 80 percent of women 25-29 cohabiting, even
among white well educated population segments. Further research should now also focus
on the types of cohabitation that have sprung up and coexist, such as a historical
substitute for marriage, a refusal of marriage as an institution, a sign of indifference, a trial
marriage, or a repeatable spell in the dating process. vi Much of this will also be of
relevance for the transition to parenthood with the issue of marriage being either linked to
parenthood or disconnected from it.

Secondly, the postponement transition with respect to parenthood is strongly a “top

down” phenomenon, with the better educated starting first. This is almost a worldwide
pattern, given the connection with the length of schooling, and Latin American countries
are no exception. However, there was already a rise in education prior to the 1990s, and
the Latin American pattern then looked exceptional since there was no appreciable rise in
ages at first union or motherhood. At present, however, this picture is being altered in
several countries, where not only women with college degrees but also those with solely
completed secondary education are increasingly postponing their first birth, i.e. well
beyond the age at leaving school. This pattern has not yet spread to all countries, and
several are still mainly in the process of completing their FDT fertility transition with the
limitation of the size of offspring to 2 or 3 children as the dominant feature. Other
countries, however, have a “double-pronged” fertility squeeze, with the higher educated
acting as “SDT-postponers” while the lesser educated are still belonging to the group of
“FDT-limiters”. Finally, in a third group of countries, typically already with sub-replacement
period fertility levels, the “SDT-postponers” are becoming a majority.

Thirdly, further investigation is needed about the continuity of cohabitation beyond age 30
and about the degree to which progression to parenthood leads to marriage or not. More
complete cohort profiles for Mexico and Brazil up till the 2000 census round show that
there is no decline in proportions cohabiting after age 30. This would mean that
cohabitation in these cases is not a transitional prelude to marriage, but a much longer life
cycle phase. Any further confirmation thereof depends on the completion of cohort
cohabitation profiles for the other countries and on the update for their 2010 census
round as well. These will be the topics of our next investigation.

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vi
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 20

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Appendix Table A1: sources of the micro-data used in the present article.

Prior to 2007: all IPUMS.

2007-11
Argentina 3
Brazil 4
Brazil 4
Costa Rica 2
Ecuador 5
El Salvador 1
Mexico 1
Panama 2
Peru 1
Uruguay 6
 22

1. Data from IPUMS https://international.ipums.org/international/

2. Data from crosstabulation CELADE/Redatam http://www.redatam.org/cgibin/RpWebEngine.exe/PortalAction?
3. Crosstabulation from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos from Argentina http://www.censo2010.indec.gov.ar/
4. Microdata from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estadistica http://www.ibge.gov.br/english/
5. Microdata from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística from Ecuador http://www.inec.gob.ec/home/
6. Microdata from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística from Uruguay http://www.ine.gub.uy/