Studies in Family Planning (2025). https://doi.org/10.1111/sifp.12282
Federica Becca, Albert Esteve and Andrés F. Castro Torres
Over the past six decades, significant demographic and familial changes, including rapid fertility decline, have occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), impacting household structure and formation. We document trends in and changes to household size and composition in the region, leveraging country-year samples from census and survey microdata across LAC countries. We measure changes in average household size, household composition by member relationship to the household head, and the evolution of female headship. Our findings show a general reduction in household size that mirrors the trend in fertility decline, albeit with subregional variations. An analysis of changes in members’ relationships over time reveals that children are the main drivers of household shrinkage. The analysis also unveils the endur- ing complexity of household composition, namely of extended family structures. Female-headed households, which are characterized by more complex house- hold structures than their male-headed counterparts, significantly increased over time. This trend partly explains the persistence of extended households in LAC. In addition, we document a gradual convergence in the average number of children per household between male- and female-headed households. These results challenge theories positing a global convergence towards nuclear family structures. Overall, LAC’s demographic and familial transformations under- score the interplay between shrinking household size and persistent household complexity.