Latin American Households in Comparative Perspective

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4267486
AutoresSusan De Vo, Susan De Vos (University of Wisconsin–Madison, autor de correspondencia)
Año1987
Volumen41
Número3
Páginas501-517
Fecha de publicación1987-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPopulation Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0032-4728 • E-ISSN: 1477-4747
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0032472031000143026
OpenAlexW2004250549
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas32

Comparative family sociology has had little to say about the Latin American family or household despite it links to a European colonial culture mixed with a distinct set of indigenous and historical circumstances. In this paper tentative judgements are put forward about the similarities and differences between the Western and Latin American household by examining four of its dimensions: the household's relative complexity, the separate residence of conjugal units, the incidence of households headed by women, and the incidence of household members being unrelated to the head. Data come from the World Fertility Survey household files gathered during the middle 1970s in six countries: Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Peru. We find that household complexity in the six countries is intermediate between that of the West and East. Many of the households are extended laterally instead of vertically, because conjugal couples tend to reside in separate households, but often live with unmarried relatives as well. In addition, a high level of marital instability results in a significant proportion of households headed by women, many of them containing members of the extended family. Finally, whereas the circulation of young unmarried people of both sexes was common in rural areas in the West, being an unrelated individual in another's household is most common in urban areas among females between 15 and 19 years old

Colonialism · Demographic economics · Economics · Extended family · Fertility · Geography · Indigenous · Latin Americans · Marital status · Political science · Population · Residence · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Demography · Ecology · Family Dynamics and Relationships · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving