Laplante, BenoîtCastro Martín, TeresaCortina Trilla, Clara2022-10-102022-10-102018Laplante B, Castro T, Cortina C. Change and continuity in the fertility of unpartnered women in Latin America, 1980–2010. Demographic Research. 2018 Jan-Jun;38(51):1577-604. DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2018.38.511435-9871http://hdl.handle.net/10230/54324Over the last decades, the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers has been increasing in Latin America while unmarried cohabitation has become more common. One would expect the former to be a consequence of the latter and that the proportion of children born to unpartnered mothers remained stable or decreased. However, recent research has shown that the proportion of the total fertility rate (TFR) that is attributable to unpartnered women has, in fact, increased. This paper aims at understanding the increase in the share of the TFR attributable to unpartnered women in Latin America. We use census data and the own-children method to measure the evolution of fertility by conjugal union status. We use Poisson regression and a multivariate decomposition technique to examine the respective contributions of changes in the composition of the population and changes in the effects of the characteristics of the population on the changes in fertility. In most countries the proportion of unpartnered women has increased. Their fertility has increased in some countries but decreased in others. In countries where it has decreased, it has done so at a slower pace than the fertility of partnered women, thus increasing the share of fertility that is attributable to unpartnered women.application/pdfeng© 2018 Benoît Laplante, Teresa Castro-Martín & Clara Cortina. This open-access work is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany (CC BY 3.0 DE), which permits use, reproduction, and distribution in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are given credit.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2018.38.51WomenUnmarried mothersUnmarried cohabitationNonmarital fertilityLatin AmericaDecompositionConsensual unionCensusinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess