Diverse family forms and quality-of-life in sub-Saharan African countries

ABSTRACT

Family is the foundation on which other institutions are built. Its quality has resultant effects on the quality of the society in its entirety. It is, therefore, expedient to examine the relationship between diverse family forms and quality-of-life in sub-Saharan African countries. Demographic and Health Surveys for four countries were used for the study. The study reveals a significant relationship between cohabitation, marriage and wealth status in all the four countries, while marriage remains significantly related with education in all the countries except Kenya. Poisson regression revealed a higher effect of education on diverse family forms except single parents in Mozambique and Nigeria, while with the adjusted data divorce/separated women in Kenya have a significantly higher coefficient (β = −1.03, p-value = 0.000) compared with other countries in the study area The study concludes that family formation cannot be overlooked, as it relates to the wellbeing of women in sub-Saharan Africa.

KEYWORDS:

• Family
• quality
• life
• Africa
• education

Acknowledgement

The support of the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to the CoE in Human Development.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.