Bimodal Age-Specific Fertility Profiles in Latin America: The Case of Chile and Uruguay

Everton E. C. Lima, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)
Kryštof Zeman, Wittgenstein Centre (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU) and Vienna Institute of Demography
Ruben Castro, Universidad Diego Portales
Mathias Nathan, Universidad de la República, Uruguay
Tomas Sobotka, Vienna Institute of Demography

In this paper we follow up with the work of Chandola et al. (1999; 2002) and Sullivan (2005) on bimodal patterns of fertility schedules in Anglo-Saxon populations. Using newly available data for Uruguay and Chile, we have found that such patterns are emerging also in these Latin American countries, especially for first births. The attention of this study is to analyze the heterogeneity within the first birth fertility patterns of those countries. A two-component mixture Hadwiger model is applied in order to study this heterogeneity and relate it to the socio-economic determinants of timing of first birth. The results suggest that primary maximum of teen-age fertility is accompanied by a secondary peak at age around 28. The levels of education along with marital status and economic activity play an important role in the timing of first births in these Latin American countries.