Geography of the cohabitation in Latin America and the Caribbean at the beginning of XXI century

Abstract

Cohabitation has been part of the Latin American union formation system since colonial times. However, this type of union has been historically more extended in some areas than others. Most of the studies that have analyzed the characteristics of this type of union in Latin America use the national scale as a territorial unit of observation, and there are few that have studied this phenomenon from a more detailed approach. This paper compiles more than 550 million of person records from the latest population censuses released (2001-2012) corresponding to about 17,000 local entities of 38 countries. The study relies on Geographic Information Systems to manage the information, to examine the consistency of the local indicators used and to identify areas of territorial influence of cohabitation and the internal homogeneity of the countries.