Susan M. De Vos uses comparative and life course perspectives to provide an in-depth demographic study of the household. Based on data gathered by the World Fertility Survey, this illuminating reference explores household composition in six Latin American countries and compares the situation with that in the United States and western Europe as well as with each other. The study examines the complex household; non-family household living; and the living arrangements of children, young adults, middle-aged people, and elderly people.

This volume explores the causes and consequences of family inequality in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.

Indigenous people constitute a large portion of Latin America's population and suffer from severe and widespread poverty. They are more likely than any other groups of a country's population to be poor. This study documents their socioeconomic situation and shows how it can be improved through changes in policy-influenced variables such as education. The authors review the literature of indigenous people around the world and provide a statistical overview of those in Latin America. Case studies profile the indigenous populations in Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru, examining their distribution, education, income, labour force participation and differences in gender roles. A final chapter presents recommendations for conducting future research.

Explores various forms of social exclusion in Latin America, including residential segregation in Bolivian cities, exclusion in health care in Brazil, barriers to legal status of Nicaraguan immigrants in Costa Rica, geographic isolation in El Salvador, and educational inequality among the indigenous in Mexico.

Politicians, business leaders and citizens look with hope to the Latin American middle class for political stability and purchasing power, but the economic position of the middle class remains vulnerable. The contributors document the remarkable emergence of this middle group in Latin America, whose measurement turns out not to be an easy task.

Key Texts for Latin American Sociology is the first book to curate and translate into English key texts from the Latin American Sociological canon. By bringing together texts from leading sociologists in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Bolivia, and Uruguay, the book provides comprehensive coverage of a wide range of issues in Latin American Sociology; drawing attention to embedded issues such as inequalities, identities, development, oppression and representation. This volume is the result of five years of collaboration between colleagues from 15 Latin American Countries, coordinated by Fernanda Beigel (CONICET, UNCuyo, Mendoza-Argentina) with the collaboration of the ′Key Texts Scientific Committee′, the Committee consists of the following members: Nadya Araujo Guimaraes (PPGS-USP, Brazil), Manuel Antonio Garretón (Universidad de Chile), Raquel Sosa Elizaga (CELA-UNAM, México), Jorge Rovira Mas (Universidad de Costa Rica), Breno Bringel (IESP-UERJ, Brazil), Joao Ehlert Maia (FGV, Brazil), Hebe Vessuri (IVIC, Venezuela), André Bothelo (UFRJ, Brazil), Carlos Ruiz Encina (Universidad de Chile), Eloisa Martin (UFRJ, Brazil), Sergio Miceli (PPGS- USP, Brazil), Alejandro Moreano (UCE, Ecuador), Elizabeth Jelin (CONICET-IDES, Argentina), Patricia Funes (UBA-CONICET, Argentina), Claudio Pinheiro (FGV, Brazil), Pablo de Marinis (UBA, CONICET, Argentina), Diego Pereyra (UBA, CONICET, Argentina), José Gandarilla Salgado (CIICH-UNAM, México), Juan Piovani (UNLP-CONICET, Argentina).

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.

This year's Latin American Economic Outlook includes a macroeconomic overview of the ongoing economic recovery from the global financial crisis as well as an in-depth report on the middle class in Latin America.

In a thoroughgoing revision of the first edition of this classic text and reference, published by Plenum in 1987, the editors have assembled a distinguished group of contributors to address such topics as past, present, and future perspectives on family diversity; theory and methods of the family; changing family patterns and roles; the family and other institutions; and family dynamics and processes.

This book forges a new approach to historical and geographical change by asking how gender arrangements and dynamics influence the evolution of institutions and environments. This new theoretical approach is applied via mixed methods and a multi-scale framework to bring together unusually diverse phenomena. Regional trends demonstrated with quantitative data include the massive incorporation of women into paid work, demographic masculinization of the countryside and feminization of cities, rapidly increasing gaps that favor women over men in education and life expectancy, and extraordinarily high levels of violence against men. Case studies in Mexico, Chile and Bolivia explore changes influenced by gender practices and expectations that involve men in different ways than women; they also highlight dissimilarities and power relations between differently positioned masculine groups. Ethnographic studies of culturally diverse arrangements, together with particular attention to subordinate versus dominant masculinities, complicate the gender binaries that circumscribe so much research and policy. Drawing attention to imbalances and conflicts generated by inappropriate models and uneven developments, the book points to opportunities for experimenting with and adapting the sociocultural institutions that govern relations among humans and between humans and their environment.