“Widowhood” Encyclopedia Entry

“Widowhood” Encyclopedia Entry

Oboler, Suzanne and Deena J. González, Editors-in-Chief The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States, Vol. 4, (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005).

The number of widows as a percentage of the population has risen throughout the United States. The percentage of elderly women who were once married to men rose from 18 percent in 1940 to 62 percent in 1990. Elderly Latina widows number as high as 70 percent of all Latinos and Latinas over the age of seventy-five. These statistics suggest that Latinas who were once married to men are most likely to be unmarried for a large proportion of their adult lives. Latinas are rarely married to the same man for a lifetime, and the opposite, being single or being widowed, is more likely to characterize Latinas' lives in their senior years. Although the most common household arrangement for adult Latinas is still marriage, followed by divorce or separation, followed by widowhood, another sizable portion of the Latina adult population remains “never married.” That percentage ranges from 14 percent to as high as 20 percent of all adult Latinas. Unmarriedness, as part of the life cycle, is important in the Latina population. Evidently widowhood as a stage of unmarriedness requires discussion because it is a defining characteristic for many Latinas, whether elderly or not, and because it is often ignored in public policy and as a social phenomenon.