Transformations in Sub-Saharan African Marriage and Fertility

Datos Bibliográficos

ID9765785
AutoresCaroline Bledsoe (Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, autor de correspondencia)
Año1990
Volumen510
Número1
Páginas115-125
Fecha de publicación1990-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-7162 • E-ISSN: 1552-3349
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0002716290510001009
OpenAlexW1988852839
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas56
Referencias citadas12

Among populations that value high fertility, marital practices often play important roles in regulating fertility. This article interprets ethnographic and demographic data to examine changes in contemporary African marriage. It shows that female education exacerbates inequities between de facto polygynous women who previously would have lived together, shared household resources, and acknowledged each other as cowives. These new forms of polygyny, however, hold an important key to explaining why polygyny and high fertility still proliferate. Men sustain the costs of polygyny and of high fertility in large part by marginalizing low-status women, usually those with the least education, as outside wives and their children as outside children

Demographic economics · Economic growth · Economics · Ethnography · Fertility · Geography · Political science · Polygyny · Population · Sociology · Demography · Family Dynamics and Relationships · Gender Studies · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Reproductive Health and Technologies