Disentangling the Different Types of Cohabitation in Latin America: Gender Symmetry and Contextual Influences

Abstract

Recent research has attested the existence of different types of cohabitation in Latin America. It is well documented that, along with a historic cohabitation, driven by poverty, modern consensual unions are booming in the region. These modern types can be explained by the framework of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT), which relates new forms of romantic relationships to socioeconomic development and changes in the ideational domain towards post materialistic values such as egalitarianism. Data from the DHS (N=65,765) of fifty Latin American regions from six countries (Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Honduras and Peru) are used to (i) explain different types of cohabitation in Latin America and (ii) to distinguish them from marriage in terms of gender symmetry and environmental influences. Multilevel linear probability regression is applied to describe previously identified types of cohabitation: traditional, innovative and blended (Covre-Sussai et al., 2014). Following, these types of cohabitation are compared to marriage in a multilevel multinomial logistic analysis. As expected, the traditional cohabitation was found to be related to female subordination and socioeconomic deprivation. The innovative and blended types of cohabitation show higher levels of gender symmetry, when compared to the traditional type and to marriage. In addition, these unions happen in places where cohabitation was never common before, such as among whites and Catholics. This study confirms the occurrence of modern types of cohabitation in Latin America. These modern types are more egalitarian and suggest the advent of the SDT in the region.