Occupational mobility and fertility in metropolitan Latin America

Abstract

Abstract The relation between career mobility and reproductive behavior is examined for five cities of developing Latin American nations: Bogota, Columbia; San Jose, Costa Rica; Mexico City, Mexico; Panama City, Panama; and Caracas, Venezuela. The data are obtained from fertility surveys conducted between September, 1963, and August, 1964, in the above-named cities under the auspices of the Centro Latinoamericano de Demografía (CELADE), and the analysis is based on information from 600–800 women per city who have been married only once and married ten years or more. Career mobility is defined as an occupational change of the husband between the date of marriage and 1963–1964, based on the Hall-Jones occupational scale. Reproductive behavior is operationalized as the number of live births. The conclusion of the multiple classification analysis is that the process of career mobility in four out of five Latin American samples is not a significant factor in explaining differential reproductive behavior. These results are compatible with a variety of North American studies which stress that variation heretofore ascribed to the process of mobility is an additive composite of past and present status effects. These findings are discussed; a theoretical and methodological critique of mobility-fertility research is presented.