Parental Divorce and Child Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does Context Matter?

Parental divorce is known to be associated with poor child health in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the great diversity in social and cultural practices, including marital ones, across the subcontinent likely yields substantial variation in the prevalence of divorce, which in turn could moderate its consequences for children. In this paper, we use Demographic and Health Survey data from 31 African countries to estimate variation in the prevalence of divorce across 290 subnational regions. We find that the prevalence of divorce varies significantly, ranging from less than 1 percent of women in some subnational regions to nearly 20 percent in others. We then estimate a series of multilevel discrete-time hazard models to analyze the association between parental divorce and child mortality, and to test whether the mortality risk associated with divorce varies significantly in subnational regions where divorce is rare compared to those where it is common. We find that children with divorced parents experience significantly amplified mortality risk where divorce is rare, even though their mothers are positively selected on socioeconomic traits. We argue that the stigmatization and discrimination associated with divorce in subnational regions where it is rare, and the lack of social and cultural support, leave divorced mothers and their children particularly vulnerable to poor health outcomes in these settings. Parental Divorce and Child Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does Context Matter? 3