Abstract
Theories of demographic change have not paid enough attention to how factors associated with fertility decline play different roles across social classes that are defined multidimensionally. I use a multidimensional definition of social class along with information on the reproductive histories of women born between 1920 and 1965 in six Latin American countries to show the following: the enduring connection between social stratification and fertility differentials, the concomitance of diverse fertility decline trajectories by class, and the role of within- and between-class social distances in promoting/preventing ideational change towards the acceptance of lower fertility. These results enable me to revisit the scope of theories of fertility change and to provide an explanatory narrative centred on empirically constructed social classes (probable social classes) and the macro- and micro-level conditions that influenced their life courses. I use 21 census samples collected between 1970 and 2005 in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Paraguay.
Highlights
During the second half of the twentieth century, the total fertility rate for Latin America dropped from 5.9 to 2.6 children per woman (Guzmán 1996; Guzmán et al 2006)
Fertility decline across cohorts was widespread, but unequal, across countries
Land tenure, and wealth inequality are characteristic of the robust stratification systems in Latin American (Morley 2001; Portes 1985; Portes and Hoffman 2003; Williamson 2010)
Summary
During the second half of the twentieth century, the total fertility rate for Latin America dropped from 5.9 to 2.6 children per woman (Guzmán 1996; Guzmán et al 2006). Male partner in a couple was considered a significant social marker of the couple’s social position, primarily because it reflected the man’s relationship to the means of production, following traditional Marxian class theory, and, and perhaps more importantly, because it captured the confluence of the couple’s material conditions of existence, social status, and dispositions towards practices (e.g. modes of living, prestige, preferences, and family arrangements) In these studies, social classes served to explain variation in fertility because they captured the confluence between couples’ social position and their associated social dispositions. Because fertility is affected by factors that pertain to both realms, examining this connection enriches our explanations for between-class variations in fertility outcomes, and for how these patterns have changed over time This paper uses these two strengths of this conceptualisation of class to study changes in fertility across the cohorts of women born between 1920 and 1965 in six Latin American countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Paraguay. The regularity of patterns across classes among this variegated sample of countries is indicative of the potential generalizability of these results to societies with similar class structures
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