Why Is the Practice of Levirate Marriage Disappearing in Africa? HIV/AIDS as an Agent of Institutional Change

Kudo, Yuya (2018): Why Is the Practice of Levirate Marriage Disappearing in Africa? HIV/AIDS as an Agent of Institutional Change.

Abstract

Levirate marriage, whereby a widow is inherited by male relatives of her deceased husband, has anecdotally been viewed as an informal safety net for widows who have limited property rights. This study investigates why this widespread practice in sub-Saharan Africa has recently been disappearing. A developed game-theoretic analysis reveals that levirate marriage arises as a pure strategy subgame perfect equilibrium when a husband's clan desires to keep children of the deceased within its extended family and widows have limited independent livelihood means. Female empowerment renders levirate marriage redundant because it increases widows' reservation utility. HIV/AIDS also discourages a husband's clan from inheriting a widow who loses her husband to HIV/AIDS, reducing her remarriage prospects and thus, reservation utility because she is likely to be HIV positive. Consequently, widows' welfare tends to decline (resp., increase) in step with the deterioration of levirate marriage driven by HIV/AIDS (female empowerment). By exploiting long-term household panel data drawn from rural Tanzania and testing multiple theoretical predictions relevant to widows' welfare and women's fertility, this study finds that HIV/AIDS is primarily responsible for the deterioration of levirate marriage. Young widows in Africa may need some form of social protection against the influence of HIV/AIDS.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: cultural institution, female empowerment, HIV/AIDS, safety net, levirate marriage, widowhood protection
• Subjects: J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J12 - Marriage ; Marital Dissolution ; Family Structure ; Domestic Abuse; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J13 - Fertility ; Family Planning ; Child Care ; Children ; Youth; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics > J16 - Economics of Gender ; Non-labor Discrimination; K - Law and Economics > K1 - Basic Areas of Law > K11 - Property Law; Z - Other Special Topics > Z1 - Cultural Economics ; Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology > Z13 - Economic Sociology ; Economic Anthropology ; Social and Economic Stratification

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