In many parts of the globe, having a child as an unmarried woman comes with a host of social and economic challenges, and can affect the timing and the quality of a woman’s eventual marriage (Smith-Greenaway and Clark 2018; Smith-Greenaway, Koski, and Clark 2021). Despite focusing on high-mortality contexts, like contemporary Africa, research on this question often makes a rather heroic assumption: that the out-of-wedlock child survives. In reality, however, child mortality remains high in Africa (Smith-Greenaway et al. 2021), and children born outside marriage are especially vulnerable to premature death (Clark and Hamplová 2013). 

What happens when an unwed mother’s child dies?  

This raises the question of whether a child’s survival alters unmarried mothers’ lives, including their eventual entry into marriage. How does the death of a premaritally born child affect the mother’s future marital outcomes? Does the child’s death deepen any observed disadvantage or can it “remove” the stigmatizing status of single motherhood, and improve her chances of marrying? Alternatively, given the high frequency of child fostering in Africa (Cotton 2021), are unwed mothers’ life trajectories unaffected by the loss of a child? 

In a recent paper, we tested these competing hypotheses by examining unmarried mothers’ subsequent marital trajectories after a first birth as a function of their child’s survival (Lin et al. 2025). We used the most recent round of Demographic and Health Surveys, collected between 2011 and 2023, spanning 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. On average, 17% of women of reproductive age (15–49) across these countries experienced a premarital birth, yielding a study sample of 69,800 women. Among them, 3% experienced the death of their firstborn during infancy, allowing us to assess how marital timing and union quality differ between women whose premaritally born child died and those whose child survived. 

Premarital child loss and mothers’ marital outcomes 

Unwed mothers whose first child died during infancy marry sooner relative to their unmarried counterparts whose first child survived (Figure 1). This pattern persists after controlling for mothers’ socioeconomic characteristics, including education. However, these analyses offer no qualitative distinctions as to the nature of these women’s marital unions , a topic that has been largely overlooked in the literature. 

Closer scrutiny reveals that following their child’s death, women tend to marry partners with 0.3 fewer years of schooling, are 16% more likely to enter polygynous unions, and 26% more likely to experience domestic violence. 

As child mortality declines, do these patterns change? 

While the broader question concerns women’s marital trajectories following child loss, a natural follow-up is whether these patterns persist as deaths, including child deaths, become rarer over time. 

In our main analyses, we focused on all reproductive-age women in the Demographic and Health Surveys. These include women born in different cohorts who have navigated romantic relationships, childbearing, and marriage under distinct circumstances. As such, we analyzed whether our findings varied across birth cohorts—including women born in the 1970s (or earlier), 1980s, or 1990s (or later).  

We found that inequalities in both marital timing and quality between unmarried mothers by children’s vital status are largest for the youngest cohort in our data, the cohort with the lowest rates of child mortality. Specifically, experiencing an infant death is associated with substantially faster entry into marriage among women born in or after the 1990s, compared to those born in or before the 1980s (Figure 2). Moreover, the spousal educational gap between mothers whose child died versus survived is considerably larger among women born in the 1980s and 1990s than among those born in or before the 1970s.

This suggests that the death of a firstborn child before marriage has become more consequential for women’s subsequent marriage outcomes, with respect to both marriage timing and quality, despite secular decreases in child mortality.

Final remarks 

Our work demonstrates that a child’s death is not only an outcome of inequality but may also be a future source of disadvantage. Future research should examine more closely how child loss reshapes women’s life trajectories and highlights the unique double burden of unwed mothers who may not only bear a child outside marriage but also, in some cases, lose that child. Although child mortality has been declining in Africa, our findings suggest that it is becoming a more consequential event for women, attesting to the need to further understand the impact of child loss on women’s lives and wellbeing. 

References 

Clark, Shelley, and Dana Hamplová. 2013. “Single Motherhood and Child Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Life Course Perspective.” Demography 50 (5): 1521–1549. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-013-0220-6. 

Cotton, Cassandra. 2021. “An Enduring Institution? Child Fostering in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Population and Development Review 47 (4): 1179–1206. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12439. 

Lin, Yingyi, Emily Smith-Greenaway, Camila Cortes Rodriguez, and Shelley Clark. 2025. “From Birth to Death: The Marital Consequences of Child Loss for Unmarried Mothers.” Studies in Family Planning. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/sifp.70041 

Smith-Greenaway, Emily, Diego Alburez-Gutierrez, Jenny Trinitapoli, and Emilio Zagheni. 2021. “Global Burden of Maternal Bereavement: Indicators of the Cumulative Prevalence of Child Loss.” BMJ Global Health 6: e004837. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004837. 

Smith-Greenaway, Emily, and Shelley Clark. 2018. “Women’s Marriage Behavior following a Premarital Birth in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 80(1): 256–270. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12433.

Smith-Greenaway, Emily, Alissa Koski, and Shelley Clark. 2021. “Women’s Marital Experiences Following Premarital Fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of Marriage and Family 83 (2): 394–408. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12704.

The post Life trajectories of African unwed mothers after the loss of their child appeared first on N-IUSSP.

In the Global South, transitions to adulthood (TTA) – when and whether young people finish school, become sexually active, form a union, have children, and find work –have changed over the past two decades (Clark and Agnant 2025) but show little convergence across regions or between genders. Despite marked regional variability and some increases over time, women typically make their reproductive and family transitions far earlier than men (Batyra and Kohler 2022; Melesse et al. 2021; Pesando et al. 2021). At the same time, while young men and women are spending more years in school, employment prospects, particularly for women, remain constrained (Ortiz-Ospina et al. 2023). These broad trends raise questions: How are young people in the Global South navigating transitions to adulthood? Are some transitions being delayed while others are accelerating? Are men and women pursuing increasingly similar or divergent pathways to becoming adults? 

Transitions are occurring later, but some are more delayed than others

Economic development, urbanization, and globalization have postponed key life transitions. Yet, Figure 1 shows that the ages at which young people in the Global South are making these transitions are not rising in tandem. In general, transitions such as school completion and union formation outpace milestones like sexual debut and childbirth. Consequently, the average age difference between finishing school and first sex has shrunk in all regions for women (panel a) and in some regions for men (panel b). In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), age of school completion and sexual debut have nearly converged, suggesting that many young men and women are now becoming sexually active while still in school. In other regions, sexual debut typically occurs after leaving school, but more quickly for women than for men. Further, as age of marriage rises, the number of young people  having sex and becoming parents before marriage is increasing. Men, in particular, become sexually active long before they marry.

Marriage lowers women’s participation in paid work and increases men’s

Despite rising education and delays in marriage, women do not always succeed in finding paid work and in several regions their employment rates have declined. This is likely because while marriage is an economic advantage for men, it remains a sizable career hurdle for women. Figure 2 shows that only about half of married women in LAC and Southeast Asia and less than 40% of married women in South Asia were employed in the first quarter of the 21st century. Not only are unmarried women more likely to be employed in all regions, but in Southeast Asia and Africa, the employment disadvantage for married women has even increased. In contrast, across all regions, married men are more likely than unmarried men to be employed, with 90% or more of married men currently working. These striking gender discrepancies show that women must often choose between forming a family and paid work, while men find these transitions mutually reinforcing.

Divergent pathways into adulthood: how men and women’s trajectories differ

Across the Global South, transitions to adulthood remain deeply gendered. Figure 3 reveals that men make nearly all transitions at substantially older ages than women and that they are much more likely to be employed. The only exception is in LAC, where men tend to become sexually active at younger ages than women. Despite some reduction of gender inequalities in education across all regions, there are large and often growing gender differences in age at union formation and age at parenthood. There is also no evidence of convergence in men’s and women’s paid employment. Indeed, by 2023, men were 25 to 55 percentage points more likely than women to be currently employed across all regions. 

Conclusions

Despite two decades of significant social and economic change and strong gains in education for both women and men across regions, changes in the timing of other transitions have been modest, and employment has stagnated and even declined for women. These findings cast doubt on whether this generation of young adults will succeed in either reducing gender inequalities or accelerating economic growth. Women continue to assume adult roles at much younger ages than men and often find that their transitions into marriage and motherhood are incompatible with being employed. Increasing female labor force participation, therefore, will likely require specific programs and interventions. Emerging research suggests that access to affordable, high-quality center-based childcare (Clark et al. 2019) and longer mandatory maternity leaves (Vu and Glewwe 2022) could substantially increase female employment. Yet, other pronatalist policies which offer incentives to marry or have more children, are likely to further impede women’s participation in paid work. Careful development of family and labor policies is therefore essential to address the large and often growing gender disparities in TTA and reap the economic benefits of women’s labor force participation.

References

Batyra, E., & Kohler, H.-P. (2022). Unequal Transitions to Adulthood: Widening Disparities in Age at First Union, Sex, and Birth in Many Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Studies in Family Planning, 53(3), 549–565. https://doi.org/10.1111/sifp.12211

Clark, S., & Agnant, K. (2025). Charting New Courses to Adulthood in the Global South. Population and Development Review, https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12711

Clark, S., Kabiru, C. W., Laszlo, S., & Muthuri, S. (2019). The Impact of Childcare on Poor Urban Women’s Economic Empowerment in Africa. Demography, 56(4), 1247–1272. https://doi.org /10.1007/s13524-019-00793-3)  

Melesse, D. Y., Cane, R. M., Mangombe, A., Ijadunola, M. Y., Manu, A., Bamgboye, E., et al. (2021). Inequalities in Early Marriage, Childbearing and Sexual Debut Among Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa. Reproductive Health, 18(1), 117. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-021-01125-8

Ortiz-Ospina, E., Tzvetkova, S., & Roser, M. (2023). Women’s Employment. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/female-labor-supply. Accessed 23 November 2023

Pesando, L. M., Barban, N., Sironi, M., & Furstenberg, F. F. (2021). A Sequence-Analysis Approach to the Study of the Transition to Adulthood in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Population and Development Review, 47(3), 719–747. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12425

Vu, K., & Glewwe, P. (2022). Maternity benefits mandate and women’s choice of work in Vietnam. World Development, 158, 105964. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.105964

The post Divergent pathways into adulthood in the Global South appeared first on N-IUSSP.

Classic demographic transition theory posited that the emergence of the “urban industrial society” transformed urban families, leading to declining fertility rates and rising ages of marriage (Notestein, 1953). In contrast, rural families were expected to maintain more traditional family behaviors, including having comparatively more children, upholding marriage as a desirable and nearly universal institution, and restricting most childbearing to within marital unions. For much of the past century and a half, family behaviors in high-income countries did, in fact, evolve more slowly in rural than in urban settings (Albrecht and Albrecht, 1996). Many demographers have assumed they will continue to do so as families in high-income countries undergo the second demographic transition characterized by sustained very low fertility rates, a pronounced retreat from marriage in favor of either remaining single or forming cohabiting unions, and a growing acceptance of having and raising children outside of marriage. 

New evidence shows that these assumptions are not valid in Canada and the United States (Clark et al., 2024). In both countries, rural women are now significantly more likely than urban women to cohabit with their partners, and rural children are roughly ten percentage points more likely than urban children to be born outside of marriage. Rural fertility remains substantially higher than urban fertility in Canada, but not in the United States. 

Rural families in flux: trends in union status, fertility, and nonmarital births

Rural families are often described as more traditional and more resistant to the tides of individualism and secularism that, some argue, are driving declining fertility and marriage rates and the increase in nonmarital births (Lesthaeghe, 2020). Yet, Figure 1 shows that in recent decades rural families have changed rapidly. Thirty years ago, rural Canadian and American women were significantly more likely than their urban counterparts to be married. By the late 2010s, these differences had disappeared. Perhaps even more surprising, rural women in both countries are now significantly more likely than urban women to be in cohabiting unions. In 2017, in Canada, the proportions were 22.4% and 14.1%, respectively. In the United States, in 2018, 19.2% of rural women but only 13.9% of urban women were in a cohabiting union.

Fertility rates have also fallen sharply among women in rural parts of the United States, but they have risen slightly among rural Canadian women (Figure 2), who continue to have 50% more children than their urban counterparts. As a result of these changes in union status and fertility, Figure 2 also shows sharp increases in the proportion of rural children born outside of marriage. More than 40% of rural Canadian children are born to either single or cohabiting mothers compared to roughly 30% of urban children. In the United States, well over half (54.5%) of rural children, but only 44.9% of urban children, are born outside of marriage. 

Do these changes constitute a crisis for rural families?

Given the common perception that rural adults hold more conservative social and political values, these changes, particularly the decline of marriage and the increase in nonmarital births, may be cause for concern. Decades of economic decline and high rural-to-urban out migration have potentially placed many rural families under considerable strain, leading to a disconnect between rural family ideals and goals and their ability to achieve them. A decomposition analysis may help to better understand recent rural-urban differences in cohabitation and nonmarital fertility (for the details, see Clark et al., 2024).

In Canada, economic disadvantage does not seem to account for the higher levels of cohabitation or nonmarital fertility. Here, while rural women’s lower educational attainment contributes to higher rural nonmarital fertility, rural-urban differences in family behaviors largely reflect the higher proportion of ethnic minorities and immigrants in urban centers. Since the majority of Canadian immigrants are from Asia, where cohabitation, both with and without children, is uncommon, the relative absence of immigrants in rural areas plays a key role in explaining rural-urban differences in these family behaviors. 

In contrast, rural families in the United States earn substantially lower incomes than urban families. Further, only a fifth of rural American women have earned a bachelor’s degree compared to a third of urban women. These differences in income and education account for most of the differences in nonmarital births. Differences in income also play an important role in elevating rural rates of cohabitation. Somewhat surprisingly, there are no statistically significant differences in religiosity, measured by the frequency of religious attendance, between rural and urban women, nor does religiosity explain differences in rural and urban family behaviors. Hence, these findings suggest that rural American women may be entering cohabiting unions and having children outside of marriage not because of their personal or religious preferences but rather because they lack the socioeconomic resources that are increasingly required to marry and remain married.

Conclusions

Our results highlight the ongoing value of studying family change through a rural-urban lens, and challenge several commonly held assumptions about rural family behaviors. 

Family change is likely to be the result of multiple drivers, probably differing across contexts. In the case of the United States, addressing rural areas underlying socioeconomic disadvantage may be key to supporting both traditional and nontraditional rural families. 

References

Albrecht D.E., Albrecht S.L. (1996). Family Structure Among Urban, Rural and Farm Populations: Classic Sociological Theory Revisited. Rural Sociology, 61(3), 446.

Clark S., Brooks M., Helou A.M., Margolis R. (2024) Are Rural Areas Holdouts in the Second Demographic Transition? Evidence from the U.S. and Canada. Demography. 61(2): 541–568 (DOI 10.1215/00703370-11237867)

Lesthaeghe R. (2020). The Second Demographic Transition, 1986–2020: Sub-Replacement Fertility and Rising Cohabitation—a Global Update. Genus, 76(1), 10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41118-020-00077-4

Notestein F.W. (1953). The Economics of Population and Food Supplies. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference Agricultural Economics (pp. 13–31). University Press.

The post The rise of nontraditional rural families in Canada and the USA  appeared first on N-IUSSP.

Is there need for subsidized center-based childcare in Africa?

When women make decisions on whether to engage in paid work, they weigh the costs of childcare against their potential earnings. Research from other areas of the globe provides consistent evidence that subsidizing daycare services mitigates this “wage tax” for women and improves their employment opportunities. Yet, some policy makers and scholars dismiss the need, or even desire, for subsidized center-based daycare for women in Africa. This skepticism is based on the assumption that African women can rely on extensive female kin networks for free childcare or easily engage in paid work in agriculture or the informal sector while caring for young children. In informal settlements, however, many mothers appear to require assistance with childcare as roughly 80% of children aged 3 to 6 years are enrolled in a private daycare center (Bidwell & Watine 2014). Nonetheless, mothers often struggle to pay the user fees associated with private childcare and others worry about the quality of available daycare options.

We set out to explore whether the cost and quality of center-based childcare influence its use among mothers in Korogocho, an informal settlement of Nairobi, Kenya (Clark et al 2019). The baseline for this randomized control study was conducted between August and October 2015 and was followed by an endline survey one year later (August to October 2016). We selected nearly 850 mothers with at least one child between the ages of 1 and 3 years, who were not using formal daycare services. A third of the mothers received vouchers to subsidize the cost of sending their child to a regular daycare center, one-third were given vouchers to attend a quality-improved daycare center, and the remaining mothers received no vouchers. Figure 1 reveals considerable demand for center-based daycare, with more than half of mothers (57.7%) who received no financial assistance starting to use these services as their children aged. In contrast, over 80% of mothers who received a voucher for either regular or quality-improved daycare centers were using these facilities, indicating that almost a quarter of mothers were unable to send their children to daycare because of limited funding. The lack of a significant difference in daycare use for mothers using quality-improved centers or regular centers indicates that cost – more than quality – is a major barrier to access to formal childcare services.

Does subsidized childcare affect employment, earnings, and hours worked?

Studies from North America, Europe, and Latin America have consistently demonstrated that costs of childcare impede mothers’ employment opportunities (Berlinski et al. 2011; Lefevre and Merrigan 2008). Our study confirms that this is also true for Kenyan mothers living in an informal settlement. Figure 2a demonstrates that women who received vouchers for childcare were 8.5 percentage points (or 17%) more likely to be employed than women who did not receive subsidized childcare. Among women who used center-based childcare, those who received the voucher for subsidized childcare were 30.5 percentage points more likely to engage in paid work. Figure 2b reveals that mothers who received daycare vouchers also earned more money. On average, mothers with access to subsided childcare experienced a 24% increase in earnings (about $6 USD or 619 KES, Kenyan Shillings, per month). Importantly, they were able to earn this extra income without increasing the number of hours they worked per week (Figure 2c), which suggests that they were able to seek better paying jobs. Mothers in qualitative interviews further explained that they could be more efficient because they were less distracted and able to work with more regular hours if they had access to subsidized childcare. Analyses by marital status revealed that most of the gains in employment were experienced by married mothers, while single mothers (most of whom were already working) benefited from access to free childcare by being able to reduce their long working hours without loss of income.

What was unaffected by subsidized childcare?

Women’s economic empowerment is not limited to their employment and earnings, however. Instead, it reflects whether women have the resources, agency, and ability to set and achieve their goals (Kabeer 2005). With the exception of decisions pertaining to child health, mothers in our study with free access to daycare did not report significantly greater involvement in other important household decisions, suggesting little impact on their overall autonomy. Nor did free childcare influence women’s short-term fertility intentions or behaviors. One may anticipate that reducing the costs of raising children could lead to higher demand for children or, conversely, that women’s greater enrolment in the workforce would increase the costs of children and, hence, lower fertility desires. However, neither effect occurred over the short duration of this study.

Why subsidize childcare in sub-Saharan Africa?

Additional studies are required to examine whether our findings are replicable and generalizable to other populations in sub-Saharan Africa. Nonetheless, they contribute to the growing literature which notes several possible benefits of subsidizing daycare, including:

• Gender equality: Women are primarily responsible for childcare. By alleviating some of this responsibility, subsidized childcare can reduce working women’s “double burden” and lower the barriers to entering work by minimizing the “wage tax”. Subsidized daycare may also allow women to pursue higher-paying jobs with better working conditions in the formal sector.
• Economic benefits for families and nations: An increase in the female employment rate of 8.5 percentage points found in this study is sizeable and consistent with findings from other regions (Berlinski et al. 2011; Fortin et al. 2012). More workers in the household can ease pressure on strained family budgets and money earned by women is more likely to be spent on improving children’s nutrition and education. Greater female labor force participation can also help spur economic growth by contributing to a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).
• Developmental benefits for children: Although results are not consistent across all contexts, several studies provide evidence that early childcare centers can improve many dimensions of child well-being, including health, cognitive development, and educational outcomes (Leroy, Gadsen, and Guijarro 2012; Martinez et al. 2012).
• Low cost, high returns: Cost of center-based daycare is a key impediment to its use. Yet, compared to many government-sponsored programs, daycare in our setting was relatively inexpensive, at only $5 USD per month, suggesting such programs may be affordable and cost-effective.

In sum, as in other regions, providing free daycare services could have numerous social, health, and economic benefits for women, their children, and the wider economy across Africa. Moreover, the need for private childcare centers is likely to increase with rising urbanization and greater female employment in the service and manufacturing sectors. Amidst the growing recognition of the global childcare crisis and mounting calls for subsidized childcare, the continent of Africa should not be overlooked (Samman et al. 2016).

References

Berlinski, S., Galiani, S., & Mc Ewan, P. J. (2011). Preschool and maternal labor market outcomes: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 59, 313–344.

Bidwell, K., & Watine, L. (2014). Exploring early education problems in peri-urban settings in Africa: Final report. Newhaven, CT: Innovations for Poverty Action.

Clark, S., Kabiru, C.W., Laszlo, S., & Muthuri S. (2019). The impact of childcare on poor urban women’s economic empowerment in Africa. Demography, 56:1247-1272.

Kabeer, N., (2005). Gender equality and women’s empowerment: A critical analysis of the third Millennium Development Goal 1. Gender & Development, 13(1),13-24.

Lefebvre, P., & Merrigan, P. (2008). Child-care policy and the labor supply of mothers with young children: A natural experiment from Canada. Journal of Labor Economics, 26, 519–548.

Leroy, J. L., Gadsden, P., & Guijarro, M. (2012). The impact of daycare programmes on child health, nutrition and development in developing countries: A systematic review. Journal of Development Effectiveness, 4, 472–496.

Martinez, S., Naudeau, S., & Pereira, V. (2012). The promise of preschool in Africa: A randomized impact evaluation of early childhood development in rural Mozambique. New Delhi, India: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation.

Samman, E., Presler-Marshall, E., & Jones, N. (2016). Women’s work: Mothers, children and the global childcare crisis. London, UK: Overseas Development Institute.

The post Free childcare could increase African women’s economic empowerment appeared first on N-IUSSP.

Implications of premarital childbearing

Premarital childbearing is of interest for demographic, social, and public health reasons. In contexts where premarital sexual activity is strongly discouraged, a rising age at marriage could lower total fertility levels by delaying the age at which most women begin childbearing. In contrast, delays in marriage may have little effect on total fertility in settings where childbearing before marriage is widely accepted, as decreased fertility within marriage could be offset by an increase prior to marriage. Most premarital childbearing occurs during adolescence and has potential implications for girls’ health, educational attainment, and future labor force participation. Giving birth at a very young age increases the risk of obstetric complications, which are the leading cause of death among young girls in low and middle-income countries. Adolescent pregnancies may also hinder girls’ educational opportunities and derail their occupational ambitions, though it is unclear how many girls leave school due to pregnancy. Recent research also shows that women who have a child before marriage in sub-Saharan Africa spend a substantial amount of time as single parents, potentially leading to economic hardship with negative consequences for mothers and their children (Smith-Greenaway and Clark Forthcoming).

Levels and trends in premarital childbearing

We used data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to measure current levels and trends in premarital childbearing. Although the DHS are cross-sectional, they include respondents from a range of birth cohorts, which allowed us to measure change over a 25-year period spanning birth cohorts from 1960-64 to 1985-89. The surveys record the month and year in which a woman was first married and gave birth to her first child, which allowed us to determine whether births occurred before or after marriage. Using this information, we measured trends in premarital fertility before the age of 20, which we considered adolescent fertility, and before 25, which represents nearly all premarital fertility in the region as the vast majority of women have either given birth or married by this age.

As shown on the map of Figure 1, recent levels of premarital fertility vary markedly across the region from 3-4% in Niger and Ethiopia to 40-45% in Liberia and Gabon. In Namibia, nearly 60% of women have had a premarital birth by the age of 25. Trends in premarital childbearing also differ dramatically across countries, as shown in Figure 2. For example, premarital fertility before the age of 25 has risen by more than 10 percentage points in Zambia and Namibia while it has fallen over the same time period in 8 countries. In countries where premarital fertility has fallen most dramatically, the decline has been concentrated among adolescent girls under 20 years of age. In some countries where premarital fertility is rising, we found the largest increases among women between 20 and 24 years of age. In Uganda, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, and Namibia, increases in premarital fertility between 20 and 24 years of age were more than double the increases among adolescent girls.

We also measured how much of the observed change in premarital fertility was driven by delayed marriage relative to other factors. As expected, we found that the rising age of marriage drove up the premarital fertility rate in nearly every country. However, the rising age at marriage explained only a relatively small fraction of the overall change. In more than half of the countries we examined, the upward pressure on premarital fertility resulting from delayed marriage was more than offset by downward pressure from other factors, resulting in net decreases. In other countries, alternative factors exerted additional upward pressure on premarital fertility and drove the overall increase higher than changes in age at marriage alone. Examples of these factors could include changing social norms around premarital sexual activity and childbearing or restrictions on access to family planning services.

Our “take home message”

Delayed marriage, particularly among girls below the age of 18, is associated with numerous positive outcomes including lower levels of maternal morbidity, better child health outcomes, expanded opportunities for female education and employment, and overall lower levels of total fertility. However, it could also increase the risk of premarital childbearing by elongating the period of exposure before marriage. Our study investigates this potentially harmful outcome. We find evidence that in several countries premarital fertility has fallen despite a rising age of first marriage. Moreover, where premarital fertility has risen it is primarily concentrated among women above the age of 20. Hence, efforts to increase the age of first marriage, including promoting female education and strengthening child marriage laws, may yield significant benefits with minimal risks to the wellbeing of African women and societies.

References

Clark, Shelley, Alissa Koski, and Emily Smith-Greenaway. 2017. “Recent trends in premarital fertility across sub-Saharan Africa.” Studies in Family Planning (available here)

Gage, Anastasia. 1998. “Premarital childbearing, unwanted fertility and maternity care in Kenya and Namibia,” Population Studies 52(1): 21–34.

Gage-Brendon, Anastasia and Dominique Meekers. 1993. “Sex, contraception and childbearing before marriage in sub-Saharan Africa,” International Family Perspectives 19(1): 14–18.

Garenne, Michel. 2004. Age at marriage and modernization in sub-Saharan Africa. Southern African Journal of Demography 9(2): 59-79.

Harwood-Lejeune, Audrey. 2000. “Rising age at marriage and fertility in Southern and Eastern Africa,” European Journal of Population 17: 261–280.

Koski, Alissa, Shelley Clark, and Arijit Nandi. 2017. Has Child Marriage Declined in sub-Saharan Africa? An Analysis of Trends in 31 Countries. Population and Development Review 43(1):7-29.

Singh, Susheela, Gilda Sedgh, and Rubina Hussain. 2010. “Unintended pregnancy: Worldwide levels, trends, and outcomes,” Studies in Family Planning 41(4): 241–250.

Smith-Greenaway, Emily and Shelley Clark. Forthcoming. “Women’s Marriage Behavior following a Premarital Birth in Sub-Saharan Africa” Journal of Marriage and Family.

The post Recent trends in premarital fertility in sub-Saharan Africa appeared first on N-IUSSP.