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WAS THERE A MID-20TH CENTURY FERTILITY BOOM IN LATIN AMERICA?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2015

David Reher  and
Miguel Requena
David Reher
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Miguel Requena
Affiliation:
UNED
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Abstract

The historic process of fertility decline was interrupted during the central decades of the 20th century with an unexpected period of increasing fertility that has been called the baby boom. Normally it is considered a phenomenon exclusive to countries participating in the historic demographic transition. A recent study suggests that a similar trend change in fertility may have also taken place in a few developing nations at approximately the same time and with similar characteristics to the fertility boom in the developed world. The main goal of this paper is to examine the extent to which these trend changes took place in Latin America and whether or not their characteristics were similar to those holding in the developed world.

Resumen

El proceso de la transición demográfica se vio interrumpido durante las décadas centrales del siglo xx por un periodo de crecimiento inesperado de la fecundidad que en los países desarrollados se ha denominado el baby boom. Normalmente se ha considerado un fenómeno exclusivo de los países que participaban en la transición demográfica. Un estudio reciente sugiere que un cambio similar de tendencia en la fecundidad pudo haberse producido en unos pocos países en desarrollo aproximadamente al mismo tiempo y con características similares al boom de la fecundidad en el mundo desarrollado. El propósito principal de este trabajo es plantear en qué medida la experiencia de la fecundidad y los ciclos de la fecundidad de Latinoamérica son comparables a los de otras sociedades desarrolladas y otras sociedades en vías de desarrollo durante ese mismo periodo histórico.

Keywords

baby boomLatin Americafertilityfertility cycleseducationJ11J13N36.baby boomAmérica Latinafertilidadciclos de fertilidadeducación
Type
Articles/Artículos
Information
Revista de Historia Economica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , December 2014 , pp. 319 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © Instituto Figuerola de Historia y Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid 2014 

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Footnotes

a

Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología, Departamento de Sociología II (Ecología Humana y Población), Campus de Somosaguas, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid, Spain. dreher@geps.es.

b

Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociología, Departamento de Sociología II (Estructura Social), C/ Obispo Trejo 2, 28040, Madrid, Spain. mrequena@poli.uned.es.

*

The authors would like to thank Albert Esteve, Robert McCaa, Héctor Pérez Brignoli and Alberto Sanz for their very helpful comments and suggestions.

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