Differential fertility in Brazil: an exploratory analysis using clusters.

Brazil has experienced a sharp drop in fertility levels in a very small period of time. Today the TFR is 1.8 (2010 CENSUS). However, previous studies have shown that there are women living with fertility rates similar to those found in the 60s, i.e. 6 children per woman. Although the proportion is small, it represents a large number of women. Many studies describe them as black, low educated, and living in poor areas.
In order to better understand the Brazilian women with high parity, we assume that this may not be a homogeneous group. It may, on the contrary, be constituted of multiple sub-groups with different profiles and therefore with different reasons for maintaining high parity. Thus, we use the cluster analysis and data from the 2000 Brazilian Census to create subgroups of high parity women. For cluster analysis we considered all women at childbearing age, with more than 4 children and the following variables: race/color, religion, home situation, living with partner and years of study. From cluster analysis, emerged 9 groups. Some results confirmed what had already been described in previous works; however, some clusters were different from the image previously conceived about these women.