Childhood Risk of Parental Absence in Tanzania

• In Event: 516 - Section on Sociology of Population Paper Session. The Demography of Family Inequality

Abstract

The families in which individuals are raised influence a range of childhood and adult outcomes, including mental and physical health, education, sexual behavior, childbearing, and income, across widely varying contexts. While parents may be absent from their children for a variety of reasons, existing accounts of parental absence in sub-Saharan Africa focus primarily on orphanhood. Using demographic surveillance data from Rufiji, Tanzania, this paper examines parental absence due to death, migration, union formation and dissolution, and fostering. Employing event history analysis, this paper quantifies children’s risk of absence by cause, and investigates gender and socioeconomic variation in this risk. 27% of children experience maternal absence by age 12, and 40% of children experience paternal absence by that age. There are striking gender differences in the risk of fostering. Furthermore, economic and social capital are strong predictors of the risk of parental absence. These results have important implications for family welfare policies as well as for our understanding of the role of the family in the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.

Author

• Lauren M. Gaydosh, Princeton University