Albert Esteve

Marriage Patterns of the Foreign-Born Population in a New Country of Immigration: The Case of Spain.

We use 2001 Spanish census microdata and multivariate logistic regression analysis to explore differences in marriage patterns between the foreign-born population in Spain, a country that has experienced a dramatic increase in international migration rates in the last decade. In particular, we examine separately the prevalence of being in a consensual and in an endogamous union for a selected and representative group of origins. Results show that after controlling for individual and union characteristics, major differences in cohabitation between groups disappear while major differences in endogamy prevail. This suggests that, when appropriate data are available, future research should take into account contextual factors.

Challenges and methods of international census harmonization

Abstract The development of IPUMS-International involves harmonizing data from different national statistical offices created over several decades. The original samples vary in quality and have different data formats and variable coding schemes. The authors describe the methods developed to deal with the challenges posed by such diversity and unevenness. The first stage of harmonization involves standardizing the data formats and correcting errors. Diagnostic routines analyze each data set, and custom computer programs modify the different data structures into a single standard format. The second stage of the work centers on harmonizing the codes for all variables shared across data sets, including the compilation and integration of all the relevant documentation.

The End of Hypergamy: Global Trends and Implications

The gender gap in education that has long favored men has reversed for young adults in almost all high and middle-income countries. In 2010, the proportion of women aged 25-29 with a college education was higher than that of men in more than 139 countries which altogether represent 86% of the worlds population. According to recent population forecasts, women will have more education than men in nearly every country in the world by 2050, with the exception of only a few African and West Asian countries (KC et al. 2010). The reversal of the gender gap in education has major implications for the composition of marriage markets, assortative mating, gender equality, and marital outcomes such as divorce and childbearing (Van Bavel 2012). In this work, we focus on its implications for trends in assortative mating and, in particular, for educational hypergamy: the pattern in which husbands have more education than their wives. This represents a substantial update to previous studies (Esteve et al. 2012) in terms of the number of countries and years included in the analysis. We present findings from an almost comprehensive world-level analysis using census and survey microdata from 420 samples and 120 countries spanning from 1960 to 2011, which allow us to assert that the reversal of the gender gap in education is strongly associated with the end of hypergamy and increases in hypogamy (wives have more education that their husbands). We not only provide near universal evidence of this trend but extend our analysis to consider the implications of the end of hypergamy for family dynamics, outcomes and gender equality. We draw on European microdata to examine whether women are more likely to be the breadwinners when they marry men with lower education than themselves and discuss recent research regarding divorce risks among hypogamous couples. We close our analysis with an examination of attitudes about women earning more money than their husbands and about the implications for children when a woman works for pay.

Potential (Mis)match? Marriage Markets Amidst Sociodemographic Change in India, 2005–2050

We explore the impact of sociodemographic change on marriage patterns in India by examining the hypothetical consequences of applying three sets of marriage pairing propensities—contemporary patterns by age, contemporary patterns by age and education, and changing propensities that allow for greater educational homogamy and reduced educational asymmetries—to future population projections. Future population prospects for India indicate three trends that will impact marriage patterns: (1) female deficit in sex ratios at birth; (2) declining birth cohort size; (3) female educational expansion. Existing literature posits declining marriage rates for men arising from skewed sex ratios at birth (SRBs) in India’s population. In addition to skewed SRBs, India’s population will experience female educational expansion in the coming decades. Female educational expansion and its impact on marriage patterns must be jointly considered with demographic changes, given educational differences and asymmetries in union formation that exist in India, as across much of the world. We systematize contemporary pairing propensities using data from the 2005–2006 Indian National Family Health Survey and the 2004 Socio-Economic Survey and apply these and the third set of changing propensities to multistate population projections by educational attainment using an iterative longitudinal projection procedure. If today’s age patterns of marriage are viewed against age/sex population composition until 2050, men experience declining marriage prevalence. However, when education is included, women—particularly those with higher education—experience a more salient rise in nonmarriage. Significant changes in pairing patterns toward greater levels of educational homogamy and gender symmetry can counteract a marked rise in nonmarriage.

Changing household patterns of young couples in low- and middle-income countries

While young couples in Western societies generally form a new household, in low-income societies new unions are often incorporated into existing households. However, there is a growing tendency in the nuclearization of households as intergenerational co-residence is undermined by growing wage labour opportunities that provide incentives for rural–urban migration and because small nuclear families adapt better to urban societies characterized by high geographic and social mobility. The objective of this paper is therefore to jointly study for a selection of low- to middle-income countries the socioeconomic and demographic conditions of women aged 15–34 and their partners in relation to their household patterns with particular interest in the comparison of nuclear and extended households. The analysis will mainly rely on data from the Integrated Public Use of Microdata Series International database (https://international.ipums.org/international/) from which census samples for the last two or latest available census rounds for 18 countries have been extracted. Results showed that women being of older age (within the 15–34 range) and at the same time having attained at least primary school education, having a husband who does not work in the primary sector and who is neither much older nor much younger were all associated with living in a nuclear household. However, individual factors explained only a small part of the overall variation in the household arrangements of young couples, suggesting that differences between countries in these dimensions do not explain much of the difference in household structure. Rather, societal indicators like economic development and the average age at marriage – that were significant in our models – may explain better the overall slow transition towards the nuclear family.

The Impact of Educational Homogamy on Isolated Illiteracy Levels

In this article, we explore the impacts that education expansion and increased levels in educational homogamy have had on couples’ isolated illiteracy rates, defined as the proportion of illiterates in union that are married to an illiterate partner. First, we develop the methodology to decompose isolated illiteracy rates into two main components: one related to level of homogamy among illiterates, and the other related to the educational distribution of the spouses. Second, we use harmonized international census microdata from IPUMS and DHS data for 73 countries and 217 samples to investigate which of the two components is more important in shaping the level of isolated illiteracy. Our results indicate that the expansion of literacy has been more powerful than the increases in the tendency toward homogamy in its impact on isolated illiteracy rates. As the percentage of illiterates decreases over time, an increasingly large proportion of them marry literate individuals, showing that opportunities for intermarriage among illiterates expand despite the strengthening of homogamy.

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

This chapter offers a general overview of the often spectacular rise of the share of cohabitation in the process of union formation in 24 Latin American and Caribbean countries during the last 30 years of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty-first century. First, we offer a brief ethnographic and historical sketch to illustrate the special position of many Latin American regions and sub-populations with respect to forms of partnership formation other than classic marriage. Second, we present the national trends in the rising share of cohabitation in union formation for men and women for the age groups 25–29 and 30–34. Third, we inspect the education and social class differentials by presenting the cross-sectional gradients over time. Fourth, we reflect on the framework of the “second demographic transition” and hence on the de-stigmatization of a number of other behaviors that were equally subject to strong normative restrictions in the past (e.g. divorce, abortion, homosexuality, suicide and euthanasia). Last, we deal with the household and family contexts of married persons and cohabitors respectively.

Cohabitation in Brazil : historical legacy and recent evolution

The availability of the micro data in the IPUMS samples for several censuses spanning a period of 40 years permits a detailed study of differentials and trends in cohabitation in Brazil than has hitherto been the case. The gist of the story is that the historical race/class and religious differentials and the historical spatial contrasts have largely been maintained, but are now operating at much higher levels than in the 1970s. During the last 40 years cohabitation has dramatically increased in all strata of the Brazilian population, and it has spread geographically to all areas in tandem with further expansions in the regions that had historically higher levels to start with. Moreover, the probability of cohabiting depends not only on individual-level characteristics but also on additional contextual effects operating at the level of meso-regions. The rise of cohabitation in Brazil fits the model of the “Second demographic transition”, but it is grafted onto a historical pattern which is still manifesting itself in a number of ways.

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

In this chapter we use census microdata to document the rise in cohabitation in Colombia and in the Andean countries of Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela over the last four decades. We use multilevel logistic regression models to examine the effect of individual and contextual variables on cohabitation. We show the individual and contextual effects of social stratification, ethnicity and religion on cohabitation. Cohabitation levels follow a negative gradient with education and vary according to ethnic background. The Bolivian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian censuses reveal that the two largest ethnic groups (i.e. the Quechua and Aymara) have, controlling for other characteristics, the lowest incidence of cohabitation. By contrast, Afro-American populations show the highest levels of cohabitation. The joint use of individual- and contextual-level explanatory variables is sufficient to account for the majority of Bolivia’s internal diversity regarding cohabitation, but not sufficient to account for the internal diversity identified in Colombia, Peru or Ecuador. Even after controls, residence in the Andes mountain areas continues to be a factor associated with lower levels of cohabitation. This invites further investigations on how the institutionalization of marriage occurred in the Andes.

Patterns of Population and Urban Growth in Southwest Europe: 1920-2010:

This work seeks to measure, locate, and explain changes in the distribution of population and urban growth in the territory formed by France, Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula between 1920 and 2010. This is based on population data of more than fifty-six thousand local units obtained from population censuses: the Geokhoris database that we built. Our starting viewpoint is that it is only possible to understand the extent of the urbanization process within the context of the evolution of all of the municipalities. The description of the distribution and growth of population at the local level shows the population concentration in the various urban agglomerations, and, since 1970, a relative deconcentration and extension of the cities. Within this context, a regression model helped us to identify the geographic factors that correlate with these fundamental transformations in population geography, which were also indicative of new forms of social organization within the territory.