Prevalence and Patterns of Female Headed Households in Latin America: 1970-1990

Abstract

Our goal in this paper is to describe levels and trends of female headed households in Latin America during the past twenty years. The data available to us do not support the idea that the breakup of the traditional family, the advent of massive rural- urban migratory flows, and the disruptions produced by rapid urbanization and industrialization leads inevitably to increases in female headship. Female headship does increase by a small amount in three countries but declines or remains invariant everywhere else. We find remarkable similarities across countries in the age-patterns of female headship as well as in the compositional factors accounting for it, namely, marital status, education, poverty and urban-rual residence.