Cohabitation and Marriage in the Americas: Geo-historical Legacies and New Trends

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxv

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2. A Geography of Cohabitation in the Americas, 1970–2010

   • Albert Esteve, Antonio López-Gay, Julián López-Colás, Iñaki Permanyer, Sheela Kennedy, Benoît Laplante et al.

   Pages 1-23Open Access

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3. The Rise of Cohabitation in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1970–2011

   • Albert Esteve, Ron J. Lesthaeghe, Antonio López-Gay, Joan García-Román

   Pages 25-57Open Access

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4. Cohabitation and Marriage in Canada. The Geography, Law and Politics of Competing Views on Gender Equality

   • Benoît Laplante, Ana Laura Fostik

   Pages 59-100Open Access

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5. The Social Geography of Unmarried Cohabitation in the USA, 2007–2011

   • Ron J. Lesthaeghe, Julián López-Colás, Lisa Neidert

   Pages 101-131Open Access

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6. The Expansion of Cohabitation in Mexico, 1930–2010: The Revenge of History?

   • Albert Esteve, Ron J. Lesthaeghe, Julieta Quilodrán, Antonio López-Gay, Julián López-Colás

   Pages 133-156Open Access

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7. Consensual Unions in Central America: Historical Continuities and New Emerging Patterns

   • Teresa Castro-Martín, Antía Domínguez-Rodríguez

   Pages 157-185Open Access

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8. The Boom of Cohabitation in Colombia and in the Andean Region: Social and Spatial Patterns

   • Albert Esteve, A. Carolina Saavedra, Julián López-Colás, Antonio López-Gay, Ron J. Lesthaeghe

   Pages 187-215Open Access

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9. Cohabitation in Brazil: Historical Legacy and Recent Evolution

   • Albert Esteve, Ron J. Lesthaeghe, Julián López-Colás, Antonio López-Gay, Maira Covre-Sussai

   Pages 217-245Open Access

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10. The Rise of Cohabitation in the Southern Cone

    • Georgina Binstock, Wanda Cabella, Viviana Salinas, Julián López-Colás

    Pages 247-268Open Access

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11. Cohabitation: The Pan-America View

    • Ron J. Lesthaeghe, Albert Esteve

    Pages 269-291Open Access

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This open access book presents an innovative study of the rise of unmarried cohabitation in the Americas, from Canada to Argentina. Using an extensive sample of individual census data for nearly all countries on the continent, it offers a cross-national, comparative view of this recent demographic trend and its impact on the family. The book offers a tour of the historical legacies and regional heterogeneity in unmarried cohabitation, covering: Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, Colombia, the Andean region, Brazil, and the Southern Cone. It also explores the diverse meanings of cohabitation from a cross-national perspective and examines the theoretical implications of recent developments on family change in the Americas. 
The book uses data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International (IPUMS), a project dedicated to collecting and distributing census data from around the world. This large sample size enables an empirical testing of one of the currently most powerful explanatory frameworks for changes in family formation around the world, the theory of the Second Demographic Transition. 
With its unique geographical scope, this book will provide researchers with a new understanding into the spectacular rise in premarital cohabitation in the Americas, which has become one of the most salient trends in partnership formation in the region.  

• Collecting and distributing census data
• Impact on the family
• Integrated Public Use Microdata Series International (IPUMS)
• Recent demogaphic trend
• Recent developments on family change in the Americas
• Unmarried cohabitation in the Americas

“The authors carefully and methodically examined causes and effects over time, yielding invaluable information about the choices couples make. … Readable maps and graphs efficiently yield spatial and temporal patterns. Chapter bibliographies are rich and valuable, providing further background and insights to a better understanding of society across the Americas. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.” (L. Yacher, Choice, Vol. 54 (10), June, 2017)

• Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED), Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona (UAB), Bellaterra, Spain

  Albert Esteve

• Free University of Brussels and Royal Flemish Academy of Arts and Sciences of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium

  Ron J. Lesthaeghe

Albert Esteve Palós, demographer and researcher, is director of Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED – Centre for Demographic Studies) and associate professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). With a degree in Geography he also has a PhD in Demography from the UAB with a thesis titled Nomenclàtor del Censo de Població i la seva aplicació a l'estudi del poblament a Catalunya (Population Census Gazetteer Files and Their Application to the Study of Settlement in Catalonia). He has been a visiting researcher at the University of Minnesota, the Institute National d’Études Démographiques in Paris and Princeton University. He has been a grant holder of the Department of Geography at the UAB for the University Teacher Training programme and of the Ramon i Cajal programme at the CED, in addition to obtaining research funding from the Spanish government’s National Plan for R&D, the Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia, and the sixth and seventh European Union Framework Programmes. In 2009 he received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council for the WorldFam project. His research is concerned with aspects related with couple formation, marriage markets and household structure, on both Spanish and worldwide scales. He has also made a significant contribution in research infrastructure projects, in particular with harmonisation and dissemination of population census microdata, in this case working closely with the Population Centre at the University of Minnesota. He has published chapters in several books and numerous articles which have been published in such magazines as Population Development Review, Demography, International Migration Review and Demographic Research.


Ron Lesthaeghe's research has been in the various subfields of demography : historical, social and economic, and mainly covering populations of Europe and of sub-Saharan Africa. He has also done research in the fields of cultural change in Europe and of ethnic minorities studies. He is currently examining the Second Demographic Transition, which stresses the importance of ideational changes affecting demographic behavior related to the formation/dissolution of unions and marital/non-marital fertility behavior.      

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