The Changing Demographics of Cohabiting Unions in Latin America: The Income Gradient

Cohabitation and marriage have coexisted in Latin America since the times of colonization. The level of cohabitation, however, has varied across and within countries. Traditionally, these unions were most common among population groups characterized by having lower socioeconomic status. However, beginning in the 1970s but to a much larger extent during the 1990s cohabitation arose in countries with and without traditional forms of cohabitation, and across different social strata. Comparative studies in the region have considered the effects of socioeconomic variables on the probability of cohabiting to be constant across cohorts, even though correlates of cohabitation have undergone important transformations during the period of cohabitation expansion. In this paper, using data from the Luxembourg Income Study Dataset, we challenge this assumption using harmonized Latin American data and regression methods to analyze within- and between-country cohort variation in the effects of income differentials on the probability of cohabiting, assessing to what extent this relationship varies across countries and to what extent it can be explained by other demographic variables. We aim to contribute to the understanding of the continuity and change in Latin American cohabitation and of the role it plays within the larger society and its stratification.