Electronic distribution by Cairn on behalf of I.N.E.D. © I.N.E.D. All rights reserved for all countries. Reproducing this article (including by photocopying) is only authorized in accordance with the general terms and conditions of use for the website, or with the general terms and conditions of the license held by your institution, where applicable. Any other reproduction, in full or in part, or storage in a database, in any form and by any means whatsoever is strictly prohibited without the prior written consent of the publisher, except where permitted under French law. * "Ramon y Cajal" researcher of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science at the Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics.

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This article compares the fertility patterns of women in consensual union and marriage in 13 Latin American countries, using census microdata from the four most recent census rounds and a methodological approach that combines the own‐children method and Poisson regression. Results show that in all these countries, fertility is slightly higher within consensual union than marriage and that the age pattern of fertility is very similar in marital and non‐marital unions. Further analyses show that over the period considered, childbearing within a consensual union has changed from rare to increasingly common, although not yet mainstream, for highly educated women in most countries examined. Results show that in Latin America, at least since the 1980s, women's childbearing patterns depend on their age and on their being in a conjugal relationship, but not on the legal nature of this relationship. The similarities in reproductive behavior between marital and non‐marital unions are not confined to the socially disadvantaged groups, but apply as well to the better off.

This article analyses patterns and trends in the educational assortative mating of Spanish women born between 1920 and 1969 using data from the 2001 Spanish Census. By means of loglinear models we examine the following issues: i) intensity and changes in educational assortative mating patterns; ii) crossing barriers across educational thresholds and iii) degree of symmetry between male and female patterns.Results show that education matters in the composition of unions: people tend to marry assortatively according to their education. However this pattern clearly differs across cohorts and educational groups, being higher for the extreme categories. The most notable trends are 1) the increasing intensity of homogamy among the more educated and 2) the incipient extinction of the traditional female hypergamic pattern.

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