Cohort changes and drivers of education-specific union formation patterns in sub-Saharan Africa

Benson John and Natalie Nitsche
Additional contact information
Benson John: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Natalie Nitsche: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2021-022, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: Despite education expansion, age at first marriage stalled in some sub-Saharan African (SSA) regions, a pattern whose underlying drivers remain poorly understood. We argue that a deeper investigation of birth cohort changes in education-specific ages at first marriage and how they are aligned with changes in girls’ school participation can illuminate this puzzle. Using Demographic Health Survey data from 34 SSA-countries, survival analyses and decomposition techniques, we examine education-specific marital behavior and change therein for the cohorts born between 1940 and 1999. Three key findings come to the fore. First, median age among all education groups stalled or reversed over some birth cohorts in all SSA regions. Second, these education-specific stalls or reversals correspond to different stages of education expansion across SSA regions. For some regions, these occurred long before the proportion of women attaining some schooling had increased substantially. Third, behavioral rather than education group composition changes explain the largest component of cohort differences in marriage rates in these education group. We conclude that increases in secondary education would be the most likely pathway to further delays in age at first marriage in West, Central and East Africa.

Keywords: Africa; age at marriage; cohort analysis; education of women (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2021-022.pdf (text/html)

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:dem:wpaper:wp-2021-022

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2021-022

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Wilhelm ().