The Effects of Marital Dissolution and Re-marriage on Fertility in Urban Latin America

The institutionalization and pace of fertility in American stepfamilies

“…In hypothesizing that marital disruption reduces fertility by depriving a woman of exposure to the socially sanctioned, high-fertility institution of marriage, remarriage is seen to restore the woman's reduced fertility by reinstating her married status. Empirical research has found that fertility is lower for women who have experienced a marital disruption (Cohen and Sweet 1974;Downing and Yaukey 1979;Lauriat 1969;Thornton 1978). The effect of remarriage on fertility is small but positive in narrowing the fertility differential between the divorced and the continuously married.…”

“…The effect of remarriage on fertility is small but positive in narrowing the fertility differential between the divorced and the continuously married. For women with multiple remarriages, the small narrowing effect in each remarriage might cumulate across time so that they often end up with slightly higher completed fertility (Chen et al 1974;Clarke et al 1993;Cohen and Sweet 1974;Downing and Yaukey 1979;Ebanks et al 1974;Thornton 1978). 2 Furthermore, two of the pioneer studies in this tradition connect the sociology of family processes with the demography of stepfamily fertility.…”

Effect of marital dissolution on fertility in Cameroon

“…Previous studies have simply investigated the relationship between the weighted reproductive time lost and the number of children ever born. A weight was assigned to each five-year interval since first marriage based on the relative fertility rates occurring during that interval in the population to which the sample belongs (see Downing and Yaukey, 1979;and Chen et al, 1974). This approach can lead to erroneous conclusions for two reasons.…”

“…Controlling for age, age at marriage, place of current residence, race, and education, Palmore and Mazurki determined that the effect of being divorced and remarried lowered completed fertility 0.5 births when compared to the fertility of continuously married women. Conversely, Ram andEbanks (1973), Chen et al (1974), Ebanks et al (1974) and Downing and Yaukey (1979) found that marital instability increased fertility in Barbados, Guayquil, Ecuador, and five Latin American cities, respectively, although in two of these studies the results of the net effect of marital instability on fertility were not reported. For example, Chen et al (1974) standardized children ever born by years of reproductive time lost and determined that people with two unions had fertility 14 per cent higher than people with one union.…”

“…The literature focusing on the relationship between marital instability and fertility is mixed in that some studies show a fertility-depressing effect of marital instability while others show a positive effect. At the core of the complexity are the two counteracting forces identified by Downing and Yaukey (1979): the negative impact on fertility of the reproductive time lost while a woman is in between unions, and the pronatalist effect of establishing a new union.…”