The Latin American cohabitation boom, 1970–2007

Education and Cohabitation in Britain: A Return to Traditional Patterns?

Cohabitation is sometimes thought of as being inversely associated with education, but in Britain a more complex picture emerges. Educational group differences in cohabitation vary by age, time period, cohort, and indicator used. Well-educated women pioneered cohabitation in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. In the most recent cohorts, however, the less educated have exceeded the best educated in the proportions ever having cohabited at young ages. But the main difference by education currently seems largely a matter of timing-that is, the less educated start cohabiting earlier than the best educated. In Britain, educational differentials in cohabitation appear to be reinstating longstanding social patterns in the level and timing of marriage. Taking partnerships as a whole, social differentials have been fairly stable. Following a period of innovation and diffusion, there is much continuity with the past.

Influences on the Knowledge and Beliefs of Ordinary People about Developmental Hierarchies

This paper is motivated by the idea that development and developmental hierarchies have been constructed and embraced for centuries by scholars and policy makers, and have been disseminated among ordinary people. Recent research shows that most people have constructions of development hierarchies that are similar across countries. In this paper, we extend this research by examining how basic social factors influence ordinary people´s beliefs about development and developmental hierarchies in six countries: Argentina, China, Egypt, Iran, Nepal and the United States. Results show that the understanding and perception of developmental hierarchies vary by gender and education. These results are important because they show how distinct groups of people have differential access to information or ideas.

Thanks to 70 years of Inter American Statistical cooperation, the world's largest integrated census microdata dissemination site www.ipums.org/international

Seventy years of Inter American Statistical cooperation, symbolized by the 70^th anniversary of Estadística, made possible the construction of IPUMS-International, the world's largest integrated census microdata dissemination site, www.ipums.org/international. Currently, the site offers access to 238 samples totaling over 540 million person records representing 74 countries. The Americas, which account for only about one-seventh of the world's population, amount to over one-third (36%) of the person records in the IPUMS-International database. Likewise, 35% of the citations in the IPUMS-International bibliography are for studies focused on Latin America, with about half of these analyzing a single Latin American country. This article discusses salient features of the IPUMS integration methods and system. National Statistical Institutes that have not yet entrusted 2010 census microdata to the initiative are invited to do so. Researchers and teachers are invited to use the data freely in analysis and teaching. Setenta años de cooperación estadística inter-Americana, simbolizada por el 70 aniversario de la revista Estadística, han hecho posible la construcción de IPUMS-internacional, la base en línea de microdatos censales harmonizados más grande del mundo, www.ipums.org/international. Actualmente, IPUMS proporciona acceso a 238 muestras con más de 540 millones de registros individuales de 74 países. Las Américas, que albergan una séptima parte de la población mundial, representan más de un tercio (36%) de todos los registros individuales en la base de datos IPUMS-internacional. Asimismo, el 35% de todas las referencias en la bibliografía de IPUMS son de estudios realizados sobre América Latina, la mitad de éstas basadas en un sólo país de la región. Este artículo presenta las principales características del sistema de integración y difusión de datos de IPUMS. Los Institutos Nacionales de Estadísticas que todavía no ha entregado la muestra de microdatos de la ronda de 2010 son invitados a hacerlo. Los investigadores y profesores son invitados a utilizar los datos de forma gratuita para sus actividades de investigación y docencia.

The educational homogamy gap between married and cohabiting couples in Latin America

The explosive expansion of non-marital cohabitation in Latin America since the 1970s has led to the narrowing of the gap in educational homogamy between married and cohabiting couples (what we call "homogamy gap") as shown by our analysis of 29 census samples encompassing eight countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Panama (N = 2,295,160 young couples). Most research on the homogamy gap is limited to a single decade and a small group of developed countries (the United States, Canada, and Europe). We take a historical and cross-national perspective and expand the research to a range of developing countries, where since early colonial times traditional forms of cohabitation among the poor, uneducated sectors of society have coexisted with marriage, although to widely varying degrees from country to country. In recent decades, cohabitation is emerging in all sectors of society. We find that among married couples educational homogamy continues to be higher than for those who cohabit, but in recent decades the difference has narrowed substantially in all countries. We argue that assortative mating between cohabiting and married couples tend to be similar when the contexts in which they are formed are also increasingly similar.