Intergenerational Patterns of Family Formation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Oluwaseyi Somefun, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Is there an intergenerational transmission of family formation in sub-Saharan Africa and are the patterns different within the region? Recent studies have documented the relationship between different socio-cultural factors associated with family formation among young people; however, the role of intergeneration regularities in family formation of young people in SSA is scarce. Examining the social control theory and the life course perspective, this paper hypothesizes that youth who experience parental cohabitation or divorce would have an elevated risk of divorce or not entering into union. We pooled census data from 6 purposefully selected countries in SSA which are available through Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS)–International, consisting of 3,920,102 young people aged 15-35. Frequency distributions and multinomial logistic regression was modelled to examine the association between household family formation and youth union formation. Results showed that children of parents who were divorced had higher odds of being divorced.