Today the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) presented a new number of its Notas de Población, a magazine edited by the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre – Population Division of ECLAC that gathers a wide variety of articles addressing up-to-date issues of methodological and theoretical relevance in the field of demographics and population studies.

The magazine’s compiled volume No. 121 brings together eight scientific articles: seven of them refer to four countries in the region (Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Colombia) and one has a regional scope encompassing 11 countries. It also contains three substantive sections: the account of an event, an interview and a literature review. This last section features comments on two texts by Jorge Martínez Pizarro, a former editor of the publication who died in March 2025. It is worth mentioning that three of the articles included in this volume were already released as part of the rolling publication modality used by the magazine after it issued Number 120.

In the first article of the new number, entitled “Individual earnings differentials by education level in Brazil: the greater inequality of the informal sector,” Ernesto F. L. Amaral, Bernardo Lanza Queiroz, Samantha Haussmann Rodarte Faustino and Guilherme Quaresma Gonçalves examine the relationship between income levels and changes and the levels and changes in the population’s composition in terms of education and the urban economy’s formal and informal sector, on a subnational scale in Brazil. To this end, they utilized census microdata from 1980 to 2010.

The following study, “Impacts of the age structure on CO2 emissions in Brazil (2002-2016)” – by Jamaika Prado, Alain Hernández Santoyo and Thiago Costa Soares – poses various hypotheses regarding the impact of the change in the age structure on the CO2 emissions associated with energy consumption, which are evaluated empirically in the case of Brazil from 2002 to 2016. To do this, they applied the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), taking the proportion of the working-age population as a proxy for the age structure.

In the third article, “Relationship between sexual orientation and mental health in young people in Chile,” Viviana Salinas Ulloa, Valentina González Madariaga, Alejandra Ramm, Pablo Astudillo, Daniel Venegas and Alejandra Bennit analyze the discrimination facing young, sexually diverse people and the impact this has on their mental health. The study covers the 2015-2022 period and utilizes the National Youth Survey, regularly conducted by the National Youth Institute of Chile. 

The fourth study, entitled “Demographics, human development and inequalities in relation to food insecurity in 11 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean,” by Jorge Paz, is framed within target 2.1 of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (zero hunger) and evaluates the association, at the household level, between sociodemographic factors (age, sex and household structure) and food insecurity. It does so using microdata from the Gallup World Poll and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), corresponding to 11 countries in the region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay) in the 2014-2023 period. 

The fifth article, “Vulnerability to poverty and residential mobility: Socioeconomic inequalities and family structures in the Vitória Greater Metropolitan Region” – by Ednelson Mariano Dota, Cimar Alejandro Prieto Aparicio and Igor Martins Medeiros Robaina – uses a research survey, conducted in 2022 in Brazil’s Vitória metropolitan area, to analyze the relationships between residential mobility and socio-spatial metropolitan inequalities, along with the influence of family arrangements on decisions relating to residential mobility in contexts of high and low vulnerability. 

In the sixth study, “Regional distribution and spatial structure of older persons’ migration in Brazil,” Rodrigo Coelho de Carvalho and Carlos Fernando Ferreira Lobo examine, in the context of the ageing process Brazil is undergoing, the regional distribution and spatial structure of the migration of older persons in that country, along with its evolution over time, based on data extracted from the demographic censuses in 1991 and 2010. For this analysis, they employ questions that capture what is known as migration in the last stage, which, in the case of Brazil’s census, applies to the 10 years prior to the census collection. 

In the seventh article, entitled “Fertility levels, trends and composition in Colombia in the 2004–2023 period: Estimates calculated using the Own-Children Method based on censuses and sample surveys,” Sulma Marcela Cuervo-Ramírez, Lina María Sánchez-Céspedes and Karen Córdoba-Perozo offer a novel description of fertility in Colombia. The analysis is based on taking advantage of heretofore underexploited data sources, such as household surveys, and on the application of an indirect fertility estimation method known as the Own-Children Method.

The eighth study, “Economic Inequality and Poverty in Older Persons in Bolivia: Effects of Social Security according to Ethnic Status (2000-2021)” – prepared by Vladimir Pinto Saravia – explores the impact of social security, including pensions and other non-contributory transfers, on poverty and inequality among Bolivian older persons in the 2000-2021 period, taking into account gender and ethnicity as added value to the analysis. The study utilizes household surveys and indicators like the Gini index and Lorenz curves, as well as logistic regression models to stylize profiles.

These eight articles are accompanied by an account of the Second regional review meeting on the implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration in Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, Santiago, March 18-20, 2025), prepared by Simone Cecchini and Pamela Villalobos; an interview with Fernando Ruiz Vallejo, President of the Latin American Population Association (ALAP) in 2023-2024, conducted by Jorge Dehays Rocha; and, as a form of tribute, the review of two texts by the recently deceased former editor of Notas de Población, Jorge Martínez Pizarro: “International migration in the rights agenda” (2007), prepared by Marcela Ferrer Lues, and “The enchantment of data: Sociodemographics of immigration in Chile according to the 2002 census” (2003), written by Cristián Doña Reveco.

Notas de Población is a biannual publication with 52 years of history, the main aim of which is to disseminate studies about the population of Latin American and Caribbean countries, although it also accepts contributions referring to other regions of the world.

For queries and comments, contact the Notas de Población Secretariat: María Ester Novoa, mariaester.novoa@cepal.org.