Marital Trajectories, Women’s Autonomy, and Women’s Well-Being in Senegal

Abstract

Abstract Divorce is frequent and widowhood is a common predicament for women in Africa, due in particular to the fact that women marry older men. Remarriage appears to take place relatively rapidly: the median duration between widowhood and remarriage among those who remarry is one year. For those who are divorced it is two years. A key question is how such discontinuous marital trajectories affect women’s well-being. Women’s marital trajectories in Senegal are described and correlated with measures of voice, resource constraints, and consumption welfare. Considerable selection into divorce and widowhood as well as subsequent remarriage is documented. Poorer women are more vulnerable to both dissolutions and remarriage and hence bear more of the costs while being nevertheless afforded a safety net in the form of a male protector. Marital breakdowns and their aftermaths are far from neutral in terms of women’s well-being.

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