Cohabitation and Marriage in the Americas: Geo-historical Legacies and New Trends

Albert Esteve Palós, demographer and researcher, is director of Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics (CED - Centre for Demographic Studies) and associate professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). With a degree in Geography he also has a PhD in Demography from the UAB with a thesis titled Nomenclàtor del Censo de Població i la seva aplicació a l'estudi del poblament a Catalunya (Population Census Gazetteer Files and Their Application to the Study of Settlement in Catalonia). He has been a visiting researcher at the University of Minnesota, the Institute National d'Études Démographiques in Paris and Princeton University. He has been a grant holder of the Department of Geography at the UAB for the University Teacher Training programme and of the Ramon i Cajal programme at the CED, in addition to obtaining research funding from the Spanish government's National Plan for R&D, the Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia, and the sixth and seventh European Union Framework Programmes. In 2009 he received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council for the WorldFam project. His research is concerned with aspects related with couple formation, marriage markets and household structure, on both Spanish and worldwide scales. He has also made a significant contribution in research infrastructure projects, in particular with harmonisation and dissemination of population census microdata, in this case working closely with the Population Centre at the University of Minnesota. He has published chapters in several books and numerous articles which have been published in such magazines as Population Development Review, Demography, International Migration Review and Demographic Research. Ron Lesthaeghe's research has been in the various subfields of demography : historical, social and economic, and mainly covering populations of Europe and of sub-Saharan Africa. He has also done research in the fields of cultural change in Europe and of ethnic minorities studies. He is currently examining the Second Demographic Transition, which stresses the importance of ideational changes affecting demographic behavior related to the formation/dissolution of unions and marital/non-marital fertility behavior.

Chapter 1: A Geography of Cohabitation in the Americas, 1970-2010: Albert Esteve, Antonio López-Gay, Julián López-Colás, Iñaki Permanyer, Sheela Kennedy, Benoît Laplante, Ron Lesthaeghe, Anna Turu, Teresa Antònia Cusidó.- Chapter 2: The Rise of Cohabitation in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1970-2011: Albert Esteve, Ron Lesthaeghe, Antonio López-Gay and Joan Garcia-Román.- Chapter 3: Cohabitation and Marriage in Canada. The Geography, Law and Politics of Competing Views on Gender Equality: Benoît Laplante and Ana Laura Fostik.- Chapter 4: The Social Geography of Unmarried Cohabitation in the USA, 2007-2011: Ron Lesthaeghe, Julián López-Colás and Lisa Neidert.- Chapter 5: The Expansion of Cohabitation in Mexico, 1930-2010: The Revenge of History?: Albert Esteve, Ron Lesthaeghe, Julieta Quilodrán, Antonio López-Gay, Julián López-Colás.- Chapter 6: Consensual Unions in Central America: Historical Continuities and New Emerging Patterns: Teresa Castro-Martín and Antía Domínguez.- Chapter7: The Boom of Cohabitation in Colombia and in the Andean Region: Social and Spatial Patterns: Albert Esteve, A. Carolina Saavedra, Julián López-Colás, Antonio López-Gay, Ron Lesthaeghe.- Chapter 8: Cohabitation in Brazil: Historical Legacy and Recent Evolution: Albert Esteve, Ron Lesthaeghe, Julián López-Colás, Antonio López-Gay and Maira Covre-Sussai.- Chapter 9: The Rise of Cohabitation in the Southern Cone: Georgina Binstock, Wanda Cabella, Viviana Salinas and Julián López-Colás.- Chapter 10: Conclusions: The Pan-American View: Ron Lesthaeghe and Albert Esteve.

"The authors carefully and methodically examined causes and effects over time, yielding invaluable information about the choices couples make. ... Readable maps and graphs efficiently yield spatial and temporal patterns. Chapter bibliographies are rich and valuable, providing further background and insights to a better understanding of society across the Americas. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." (L. Yacher, Choice, Vol. 54 (10), June, 2017)