Blurred Differences: Childbearing within marriage and consensual union in Latin America, 1980-2010

This paper compares the fertility patterns of consensual unions and marriages in 13 Latin American countries using census microdata from the three most recent census rounds and a methodological approach that combines the own-children method and Poisson regression. Results show that in all countries examined fertility is slightly higher within consensual unions than marriages. The largest difference can be observed among women aged 30 to 45. Once educational attainment and other socio-demographic compositional variables are controlled, differentials generally fade. The age pattern of fertility is also documented to be very similar in marital and consensual unions. According to these results, we can conclude that in Latin America, at least since the 1980s, women’s childbearing patterns depend on their age and on their living in a conjugal relationship, but not on the legal nature of this relationship.