The Psychological Benefits of Marriage and Children in Rural Malawi

Abstract

Despite an extensive literature on the psychological rewards of marriage and children in high‐income countries, research on these relationships in low‐income countries remains limited. This paper draws on data from 4,133 adult women and men interviewed in the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health to examine how marital status, categorized as never, formerly, monogamously, and polygynously married, and number of children are associated with psychological well‐being. With respect to marital status, we find that women in polygynous unions fare worse than monogamously married women and this detrimental effect is stronger for women than for men. Formerly married men and women of reproductive age experience the worst psychological outcomes, although this association wanes with age. In contrast, the benefits of having children is only evident among older Malawian women. These findings offer novel insights into the patterns of nearly universal marriage and high fertility that characterize Malawi and much of sub‐Saharan Africa.

Marital dissolutions and changes in mental health: Evidence from rural Malawi

“…Changes in mental health are important to consider here, in part, because they precede declines in physical health outcomes of rural Malawians (Kohler et al 2017). These changes are highly gendered too: Older Malawian women, in general, have worse mental health outcomes than men (Kohler et al 2017), but men who are not married have among the worst mental health outcomes of any other demographic group (Clark et al 2020).…”

Marital experiences and depressive symptoms among older adults in rural South Africa

“…Likewise, the low marital stability and permanence in Agincourt may have rendered the benefits of marriage for mental health less salient. In a similar vein, Clark et al. (2020) find that marital dissolution is less detrimental to psychological health of older than younger adults, and posit that this could be due to greater normalcy and social acceptability of being unmarried at older ages.…”

“…Meanwhile, results for men more closely mirror findings in Western settings: Spending more time outside of marriage is associated with worse mental health ( Myroniuk et al., 2021 ). On the other hand, another study in the same Malawian setting found that being formally married was associated with worse psychological well-being for men and women alike, and this was more pronounced among those in reproductive ages ( Clark et al., 2020 ). These findings, which sometimes contradict findings in high-income settings, illustrate the importance of investigating these associations across disparate settings.…”

“…Although more limited, studies based in SSA—namely, Malawi—have provided mixed results in the relationship between marital status and health outcomes among older adults. In some cases, marital dissolution has been found to be detrimental to self-rated health and psychological well-being ( Clark et al., 2020 ; Myroniuk, 2016 ). However, the magnitude of associations between marital dissolution and self-rated health was weaker than anticipated, suggesting that people in such settings who survive to older ages may be selective on factors that make them more resilient against the potential negative impacts of marital dissolution ( Myroniuk, 2016 ).…”

“…However, the magnitude of associations between marital dissolution and self-rated health was weaker than anticipated, suggesting that people in such settings who survive to older ages may be selective on factors that make them more resilient against the potential negative impacts of marital dissolution ( Myroniuk, 2016 ). These studies offer important insight into the interrelationships between marriage and health in SSA settings, but they are limited in their sample sizes and their ability to distinguish between effects of widowhood versus divorce ( Clark et al., 2020 ; Myroniuk et al., 2021 ).…”