Length Interval between second and third births as an indicator of failure in the implementation of reproductive preferences in the context of Latin American fertility decline - the case of Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia

The objective of this paper is to understand the extent to which longer intervals between births of order two and three are indicators of failure to implement reproductive preferences in a context of declining fertility among less developed countries, mainly to Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia, where women with intermediate parity (three children) present, in the 2000s, a significantly higher birth intervals (BI) between orders two and three than between the first and second child, and the former is quite close to the BI of women who had only two children. This difference may help to understand issues such as efficient use of contraception, unwanted fertility and implementation of reproductive preferences in the region, since the ideal number of children oscillates around 2.0. The focus are women 35 years and older in these three countries in the 2000s, segmented by household area and schooling. For this purpose, we will make a descriptive analysis of the variables related to unwanted fertility using data from the DHS alike surveys. With the obtained results, we intended to show that women who suffer from unwanted fertility are not so much those with high parity and who live on the edge of society, but even those with low parity (three children) and are socially privileged.