THE FERTILITY TRANSITION AND FAMILY URBAN INCOME-DISTRIBUTION IN COLOMBIA

This paper examines the effect of social and demographic changes on family income distribution in the largest Colombian cities between 1967 and 1968 and 1984 and 1985, two periods representing the conditions before and after Colombia's sharp fertility decline. The results indicate that urban family income distribution worsened between the two periods, when income shares from the middle-income groups declined while those received by the richest 10 percent increased and the shares received by the poorest 50 percent were unchanged. A decomposition of the Theil index revealed that the deterioration in urban family income inequality could be traced to groups whose representation in the population increased, namely: households with more educated heads, with working wives, with smaller families, and with fewer children.