Adolescent Fertility, Marriage, Race and Religion in Brazil

Sarah McKinnon, University of Texas at Austin
Catherine McNamee, University of Texas at Austin

The objective of our analysis is to examine the influence of race and religion on the marital status of adolescents who gave birth in the previous year. Analyzing the largest 20 cities in Brazil using the Brazilian 2000 census, we consistently found race to be an important predictor even with a number of controls including age, migrant status, education and municipio. The results revealed that adolescents of the Assembly of God Church and other Pentecostal Protestant religions were more likely to marry or cohabitate than Catholics, especially for blacks. Specifically, the odds ratio compared to white Catholics for members of the Assembly of God Church was 3.29 for blacks, 1.57 for browns and 2.44 for whites. Thus, our findings show a clear differential in adolescent fertility by race and religion.