The Cross-Cultural Study of Fertility among Hispanic Adolescents in the Americas

Abstract

This paper examines various definitions of marriage in order to compare the nonmarital fertility of Hispanic adolescents in the Americas. The data include distributions of legal marriages and consensual unions among adolescents in Latin America, proportions of Latin American adolescents who have borne a child by categories of marriage and consensual unions, marital distributions among Hispanic adolescents in the United States, and fertility by marital status for young US Hispanics. The vast majority of young women in Latin America report never having been married or in union, although more reported living in consensual union than in legal marriages. Rates of childbearing are low among women who report never having been consensually or legally married. Foreign-born Hispanic women are considerably more likely to be married than their US-born compatriots. Foreign-born women from countries with high rates of consensual unions are more likely than young US-born women to have had a premarital birth; in contrast, foreign-born women from countries with low rates of consensual unions are less likely to have borne a child.