Premarital birth, children’s sex composition and marital instability among women in sub-Saharan Africa

Clifford O. Odimegwu (), Joshua O. Akinyemi () and Nicole Wet ()
Additional contact information
Clifford O. Odimegwu: University of the Witwatersrand
Joshua O. Akinyemi: University of the Witwatersrand
Nicole Wet: University of the Witwatersrand

Journal of Population Research, 2017, vol. 34, issue 4, No 2, 327-346

Abstract: Abstract Anecdotal evidence in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) suggests that it is unlikely for marriages with children to break up, especially when the children are male. To provide new empirical evidence, this study was conducted to investigate the effect of premarital birth and sex composition of children on marital instability (divorce or separation) among ever-married women in SSA. Data from a weighted sample of 205,997 women from Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 26 sub-Saharan African countries between 2011 and 2014 were analysed. Stratified by sub-region, analysis involved the use of descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regression models with robust standard errors. Parity-specific logistic regression models were fitted to investigate the association between sex composition and marital instability at parities 1, 2, 3 and 4+. The percentage of women with experience of marital instability in the four sub-regions was: Western (4.6%), Central (12.0%), Eastern (10.5%) and Southern Africa (11.4%). Premarital birth was significantly associated with marital instability in Western (OR = 1.52, p

Keywords: Premarital birth; Children’s sex composition; Divorce; Separation; Marital instability; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12546-017-9193-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joprea:v:34:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s12546-017-9193-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... tudies/journal/12546

DOI: 10.1007/s12546-017-9193-4

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Research is currently edited by Santosh Jatrana, Dharmalingam Arunachalam, Aude Bernard, Vladimir Canudas-Romo, Ann Evans, Michael Haan, Brian Houle, Trude Lappegård and Gordon Carmichael

More articles in Journal of Population Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().