Rights statement: The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10680-016-9401-5
Accepted author manuscript, 714 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Difficulties conceiving and relationship stability in sub-Saharan Africa
T2 - the case of Ghana
AU - Fledderjohann, Jasmine
N1 - The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10680-016-9401-5
PY - 2017/2/1
Y1 - 2017/2/1
N2 - Little is known about the relationship between self-identified difficulties conceiving, biomedical infertility, and union instability in sub-Saharan Africa. Previous research suggests that infertility increases the risk of psychological distress and marital conflict, encourages risky sexual behavior, and deprives infertile individuals and couples of an important source of economic and social capital. Qualitative research has suggested that there may be a link between infertility and divorce; less is known about the implications of infertility for unmarried couples. In this paper, discrete-time hazard models are applied to 8 waves of secondary panel data from Ghana collected by the Population Council of New York and the University of Cape Coast (pooled n=10,418) between 1998 and 2004. Results show a positive relationship between perceived difficulties conceiving and relationship instability for both married women and those in nonmarital sexual unions; this relationship, however, does not hold for biomedical infertility. Future research should examine this relationship using nationally representative data in a cross-national comparison to determine whether results hold across the subcontinent.
AB - Little is known about the relationship between self-identified difficulties conceiving, biomedical infertility, and union instability in sub-Saharan Africa. Previous research suggests that infertility increases the risk of psychological distress and marital conflict, encourages risky sexual behavior, and deprives infertile individuals and couples of an important source of economic and social capital. Qualitative research has suggested that there may be a link between infertility and divorce; less is known about the implications of infertility for unmarried couples. In this paper, discrete-time hazard models are applied to 8 waves of secondary panel data from Ghana collected by the Population Council of New York and the University of Cape Coast (pooled n=10,418) between 1998 and 2004. Results show a positive relationship between perceived difficulties conceiving and relationship instability for both married women and those in nonmarital sexual unions; this relationship, however, does not hold for biomedical infertility. Future research should examine this relationship using nationally representative data in a cross-national comparison to determine whether results hold across the subcontinent.
KW - Infertility
KW - event history analysis
KW - sub-Saharan Africa
KW - Ghana
KW - relationship stability
U2 - 10.1007/s10680-016-9401-5
DO - 10.1007/s10680-016-9401-5
M3 - Journal article
VL - 33
SP - 129
EP - 152
JO - European Journal of Population
JF - European Journal of Population
SN - 0168-6577
IS - 1
ER -