Family composition and marital dissolution in rural Nepal, 1945–2008

Abstract

The presence, number, sex, and age composition of children within families can have important influences on couples’ marital outcomes. Children are valued across settings, but their value in settings where there is an absence of formalized social security is distinctive. This paper explores the influences of childlessness, and different number, age, and sex compositions of children, on the odds of marital dissolution among couples in rural Nepal. Results reveal that childless couples face significantly higher odds of dissolution than couples with at least one child, and each additional child—up to three children—reduces couples’ odds of dissolution. Furthermore, having a child aged under two reduces couples’ odds of marital dissolution, but interactions reveal that this age effect only holds at parity one. Surprisingly, despite a history of son preference in this setting, there is no evidence that children’s within-parity sex composition is associated with the odds of marital dissolution.

Keywords:

• fertility
• family composition
• divorce
• marital dissolution
• South Asia

Notes

1 Elyse Jennings is at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, 9 Bow Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

2 I am grateful for support from the Population Studies Center at University of Michigan (grant numbers R24 HD041028 and T32 HD007339), from the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina (grant numbers T32 HD007168 and R24 HD050924), and from the National Science Foundation (grant number OISE 0729709). I would like to thank the Institute for Social and Environmental Research in Chitwan, Nepal, for collecting the data used here; Keera Allendorf, William Axinn, Jennifer Barber, Dirgha Ghimire, Katherine Lin, Philip Morgan, Sowmya Rajan, and Abigail Stewart for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper; and Cathy Sun for assisting with data management. All errors and omissions remain the responsibility of the author. The underlying research materials for this article can be accessed at <http://perl.psc.isr.umich.edu/data1.html>.