Divorce, living arrangements, and material well-being during the transition to adulthood in rural Malawi

Abstract

In this paper, we use longitudinal data to investigate how parental death and divorce influence young women’s own experience of divorce in Malawi, a setting where women marry relatively early and unions are fragile. We find that maternal death and parental divorce are positively associated with divorce for young women but, after controlling for socio-demographic and marital characteristics, only the association with maternal death remains statistically significant. Maternal and paternal death are both strongly associated with women’s post-divorce living arrangements, which in turn affects their material well-being. This finding suggests that divorcing at a young age shapes the subsequent life chances of women; although some women return to their parental home and may have the opportunity to reset the transition to adulthood, other women begin their 20s as head of their own household and with considerable material disadvantage.

Keywords:

• divorce
• living arrangements
• transition to adulthood
• orphan
• Malawi

Notes

1 Please direct all correspondence to Monica J. Grant, 8128 Sewell Social Science Building, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53711, USA; or by E-mail: [email protected]

2 We are grateful to Marcy Carlson and Sangeetha Madhavan for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. The MSAS was supported by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development (R01 HD062155 and R01-HD047764) and the Spencer Foundation (200700065). Additional support was provided by a core grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2C HD047873) to the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

3 The Malawi Schooling and Adolescent Study is publicly available and can be accessed at https://www.popcouncil.org/research/malawi-schooling-and-adolescent-study-data-sets