Kinship patterns and co-residence in rural areas of Mali and Senegal

Bruno Masquelier, Université Catholique de Louvain
Gilles Pison, French National Museum of Natural History and Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Aurélien Dasré, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense

Most of the research on kinship patterns in Africa has been conducted through the lens of living arrangements. Changes in living arrangements can be difficult to interpret because they amalgamates two sources of variation. The first is the availability of kins, which is purely a function of mortality, marriage and fertility rates. The second is made of social norms defining the propensity of specific types of kin to co-reside with each other. To be able to tease out the demographic constraints on changes in living arrangements, we combine stochastic micro-simulations with data from two rural areas in Western Africa where polygyny is frequent and families are extended: Bandafassi in Senegal and the Bwa country in Mali. How does the availability of kins evolve as people grow in age? Which proportions of kins are co-resident in these areas? What are the effects of demographic changes on kinship networks and living arrangements?