Abstract:
Family represents a key institution in people’s lives, the institution of first resort in times of hardship or crisis. It is the field of action where the most basic dimensions of human security are defined: the processes of personal physical reproduction and social integration. This work seeks to shed some light on the demographic features which affect the socio-economic and cultural context of a specific region of the world, Latin America, and the changes which have taken place over time. By recourse of household data collected by Demographic Health Surveys, the work aims at defining Latin American household composition, using a series of common indicators: from fertility rates to marital status trends and so on. In the light of aggregate data concerning the presence of a growing number of households headed by women, particular attention will be paid to the issue of women's empowerment, the increasing participation of women both in the labour market and in the social domains and the interrelatedness of gender and household organization. A large number of women's empowerment indicator will help to achieve the final purpose of this thesis work which is, in fact, to offer an explanation of how and why women-headed households have come to be widely common in Latin America.
