Becoming sexually active, having a first birth, and getting married in sub-Saharan Africa

Ian M. Timaeus, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)

This paper examines how becoming sexually active and having a baby affect young women’s first marriage rates in sub-Saharan Africa. Age-for-age, who is most likely to marry: a virgin, a sexually-active but childless woman, someone pregnant, or a single mother? The analysis is based on the Demographic and Health Surveys conducted between 1990 and 2013 in 32 sub-Saharan African countries. I use survival analysis with time-varying co-variates to estimate relative risks of first marriage and age-specific marriage rates for the four groups of women. Wide variations exist across sub-Saharan Africa in the relative likelihood that virgins, the sexually active, the pregnant and young mothers will marry. The proportions of women marrying that come from each of these groups also varies greatly between countries. Within this overall picture of diversity, striking similarities exist in marriage patterns both between some neighbouring countries and across some major sub-regions of Africa.