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  • br Results Table shows descriptive statistics for

    2018-10-26


    Results Table 1 shows descriptive statistics for the full sample. A small percentage (3%) of Malawian children was born premaritally whereas the vast majority of children (69.7%) were born to mothers who married before their birth. There is further diversity in mothers’ marital status: approximately 15% of children have mothers who are married in a polygynous arrangement, and approximately 13% of children have mothers who are single due to either divorce/separation or widowhood. Nearly one in five children has a mother who has been married more than once, which I include to further account for family instability. To provide a sense of how children’s characteristics, as well as their household and her2 inhibitor characteristics, differ according to their mothers’ educational background, in Table 2 I disaggregate the descriptive statistics by mothers’ (1) educational attainment and (2) literacy. The results confirm that premarital childbearing is significantly more common among secondary-educated women in Malawi compared to their less-educated peers. Merely 1% of children whose mother had never been to school were born premaritally, whereas one in ten children with secondary-educated mothers were born premaritally. A similar finding emerges when looking at women’s literacy: premarital childbearing is twice as prevalent among women who are literate versus non-literate. These findings demonstrate the need to consider the diverse circumstances under which women have premarital births. Turning to the multivariate models, the results in Table 3 begin with the direct associations between mothers’ marital status, educational background, and children’s risk of mortality. The first model focuses on premarital childbearing and confirms that, in line with past evidence, children born premaritally have significantly elevated risk of mortality compared to their peers born to married mothers. In fact, these children experience a 35% increase in the odds of mortality before their 5th birthday, compared to their peers whose mothers were married at the time of their birth. The powerful survival disadvantage associated with premarital childbearing – matched with the equally powerful survival advantage associated with having a more highly-educated and/or literate mother – raises the question of whether the benefits of the latter offset the consequences of the former. To assess whether smooth muscle is the case, Table 4 shows model estimates from discrete-time hazard models disaggregated by mothers’ educational attainment. As Model 1 shows, children born premaritally to mothers who had never been to school experience a substantially larger risk of dying compared to their peers whose uneducated mothers gave birth within the context of marriage. However, the results in Models 2 and 3 confirm that premarital childbearing is only marginally associated with an elevated risk of death among primary-educated women (p<.01 level) (Model 2) and non-significantly associated with an elevated risk of death (p<.05 level) among the subsample of children whose mothers had gone to secondary school (Model 3). That is, the disadvantage associated with premarital childbearing is concentrated among children with the least educated mothers. Supplemental models including an interaction term confirms these differences are statistically significant (p<.05). To confirm that these findings are consistent when looking at another dimension of mothers’ educational background – literacy skills – in Table 5, I disaggregate the sample according to whether the child’s mother can read. As results in Model 1 show, children whose mothers cannot read experience a substantially higher risk of death compared to their peers born to married mothers. In fact, compared to their peers born within marriage, children born premaritally to women who are unable to read experience a 72% increase in the odds of dying before their 5th birthday. However, when focusing only on children whose mothers can read, we see no elevated risk of mortality associated with being born premaritally versus being born to a married mother. Again, supplemental models including an interaction term confirm these differences are significant (p<.05).