IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jfamec/v27y2006i1p113-132.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Marital Stability in Sub-Saharan Africa: Do Women’s Autonomy and Socioeconomic Situation Matter?

Author

Listed:
  • Baffour Takyi
  • Christopher Broughton

Abstract

One key hypothesis that has received considerable attention in recent family discourse is the notion that improvements in women’s socioeconomic circumstances (also called female autonomy) has a positive effect on familial processes and outcomes such as marital instability. Absent from this debate are cross-cultural research that test the applicability of these findings with non-U.S. data. We use representative data from Ghana to explore whether dimensions of women’s autonomy have the hypothesized positive effect on divorce processes in Africa. Consistent with findings from the United States, results from our African data demonstrate that women’s autonomy has a positive effect on divorce. This observation is true not only with the use of conventional autonomy measures such as work and education, but also with regard to institutional measures of autonomy such as matrilineal kinship ties. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Suggested Citation

  • Baffour Takyi & Christopher Broughton, 2006. "Marital Stability in Sub-Saharan Africa: Do Women’s Autonomy and Socioeconomic Situation Matter?," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 113-132, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jfamec:v:27:y:2006:i:1:p:113-132
    DOI: 10.1007/s10834-005-9006-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10834-005-9006-3
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10834-005-9006-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ayala Wineman, 2019. "Women’s welfare and livelihoods outside of marriage: evidence from rural Tanzania," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 993-1024, September.
    2. Clifford O. Odimegwu & Joshua O. Akinyemi & Nicole Wet, 2017. "Premarital birth, children’s sex composition and marital instability among women in sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 34(4), pages 327-346, December.
    3. Benson John & Natalie Nitsche, 2022. "Marital life courses in sub-Saharan Africa: all cause union dissolution, its timing, and time spent outside marriage," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2022-017, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    4. Bilampoa Gnoumou, 2017. "Union breakdown in West African cities: The cases of Ouagadougou and Lomé," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 37(5), pages 101-128.
    5. Paul Tiffin & Mark Pearce & Carole Kaplan & Trian Fundudis & Louise Parker, 2007. "The Impact of Socio-economic Status and Mobility on Perceived Family Functioning," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 28(4), pages 653-667, December.
    6. Lauren Gaydosh, 2015. "Childhood Risk of Parental Absence in Tanzania," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(4), pages 1121-1146, August.
    7. Clifford Odimegwu & Oluwaseyi Dolapo Somefun & Joshua Akinyemi, 2017. "Gender Differences in the Effect of Family Structure on Educational Outcomes Among Nigerian Youth," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(4), pages 21582440177, November.
    8. Castro Ayebeng & Kwamena Sekyi Dickson & Abdul-Aziz Seidu & Joshua Amo-Adjei, 2022. "Single motherhood in Ghana: analysis of trends and predictors using demographic and health survey data," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-10, December.
    9. Wineman, Ayala, 2017. "Women′S Welfare And Livelihoods Outside Of Marriage: Evidence From Rural Tanzania," Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research Papers 261671, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security (FSP).
    10. Jasmine Fledderjohann, 2017. "Difficulties Conceiving and Relationship Stability in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Ghana," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 33(1), pages 129-152, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jfamec:v:27:y:2006:i:1:p:113-132. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.