Educational Assortative Mating and Harsh Parenting in Sub-Saharan Africa

Luca Maria Pesando (), Elisabetta De Cao, Giulia La Mattina () and Alberto Ciancio ()
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Luca Maria Pesando: New York University
Giulia La Mattina: University of South Florida
Alberto Ciancio: University of Glasgow

No 16466, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Leveraging underused information on child discipline methods, this study explores the relationship between parental educational similarity and violent childrearing practices, testing a new potential pathway through which parental educational similarity may relate to child outcomes. The study uses data from Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) and Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) covering 27 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Results suggest that educationally similar couples are less likely to adopt violent childrearing practices relative to educationally dissimilar ones, with differences by age of the child, yet less so by sex and birth order. Homogamous couples where both partners share high levels of education are also less (more) likely to adopt physically violent (non-violent) practices relative to homogamous couples with low levels of education. Relationships are stronger in countries characterized by higher GDP per capita, Human Development Index, and female education, yet also in countries with higher income and gender inequalities. Besides stressing the importance of female education, these findings underscore the key role of status concordance vs discordance in SSA partnerships. Tested micro-level mechanisms and country-level moderators only weakly explain result heterogeneity, calling for more research on the topic.

Keywords: status consistency; parenting; child discipline; assortative mating; education; sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J12 J13 O12 O15 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 70 pages
Date: 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev and nep-edu
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Published - published in: Social Science and Medicine, 2024, 351, 116954

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