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Childhood Risk of Parental Absence in Tanzania

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Demography

Abstract

Although parents might not live with their children for a variety of reasons, existing accounts of parental absence often examine one cause in isolation. Using detailed longitudinal demographic surveillance data from Rufiji, Tanzania, this article examines parental absence due to death, migration, child relocation, union dissolution, and union formation from 2001–2011. Employing survival analysis, the article quantifies children’s risk of absence by cause and investigates sociodemographic variation in this risk. Of children born into two-parent households, 25 % experience maternal absence by age 10, and 40 % experience paternal absence by the same age. Roughly one-quarter of children are born into single-mother families with an absent father at birth, and nearly 70 % of these children experience maternal absence as well by age 10. Despite the emphasis on orphanhood in the research and policy communities, parental death is the least common cause of absence. Furthermore, although demographic and socioeconomic characteristics are strong predictors of absence, variation in these relationships across causes underscores the distinctiveness and similarity of different reasons for absence.

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Notes

  1. When referring to the literature on parental absence in sub-Saharan Africa, I draw from studies across the region. This is not to diminish the tremendous diversity across the region, and when possible, I refer to research and estimates from Tanzania, the country of study.

  2. I use the term “child relocation” in the analysis because I analyze maternal and paternal absence separately. Child fostering situations are included under child relocation; however, not all child relocations result in child fostering.

  3. Again, the analysis refers to child relocation, rather than child fostering, because it considers maternal and paternal absence separately. When possible, I note when child relocation implies nonresidence with both parents.

  4. The rarity of repeated events may be due to the definition of migration used in the site. An individual is considered a migrant when he/she is nonresident in the registered household for two consecutive visits. If the individual is still absent at the visit following the first report of absence, an out-migration form is completed, indicating the date of out-migration. Consequently, individuals must be absent for a minimum of four months in order to be classified as migrants. Absences or returns of durations less than four months are not captured.

  5. Migration may be internal (from one household in the site to another household in the site) or external (from a household in the site to somewhere outside the site).

  6. Under the cause of absence labeled as “child relocation,” there are three possibilities: (1) traditional child fostering, in which the child leaves the household and both parents remain; (2) the child leaves the household of the parent under consideration, but the other parent is already absent, making it impossible to know whether the child is leaving one parent to reunite with the other or going to a different location where he/she will not reside with either parent; and (3) the child leaves the household of the parent under consideration at the same time as the other parent, making it impossible to know whether the exiting child and parent are going to the same destination and will remain coresident or instead they are going to different destinations. Because of the uncertainty regarding what happens in the second and third scenarios, I include all situations under the same cause labeled “child relocation.”

  7. Asset data were collected in 2001, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

  8. Although children usually leave home for education or marriage by the age of 18, this measure of coresident nonparental adults may include adult siblings who reside with the child. More often, the measure includes aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Lineality is certainly important, but given the available data, I am unable to differentiate between maternal and paternal kin. For children born into two-parent households, approximately 9 % of coresident adults at the time of birth are older than 40 (an approximation for grandparents). For children born into single-mother households, approximately 25 % of coresident adults at the time of birth are older than 40.

  9. Such difficulties with data regarding fathers in sub-Saharan Africa have been discussed elsewhere and should not preclude the current analysis (Hosegood and Madhavan 2010). Madhavan et al. (2012) found similar percentages for a South African data set.

  10. Continuous residence refers to coresidence with no absences lasting four months or longer. Absences of less than four months are not captured in the data and are considered continuous coresidence.

  11. I use the piecewise exponential model rather than the Cox model because I want to estimate the hazard function itself. In robustness checks, I estimate Cox regressions, and the findings are essentially unchanged (results not shown).

  12. This dependence is not unique to the piecewise exponential model. I include the entire sample of children in the Kaplan-Meier estimates because I am interested primarily in precise estimation of the survivor function, not in the standard errors.

  13. In robustness checks (not shown), I estimate the models with different strategies for addressing this dependence, including shared frailty terms to account for multiple children of the same parent, randomly sampling children but not including weights, and including all children without attempting to address the dependence among siblings. The conclusions are unchanged.

  14. Temporary returns of less than four months are not captured in the data.

  15. The results are not shown, but this estimate can be inferred in Figs. 1 and 2 as the median age of absence for children who ever experience absence.

  16. The results are not shown, but this estimate can be inferred in Fig. 3 as the median age of absence for children who ever experience absence.

  17. It is possible that this move of the child and mother out of the household of the father represents an informal separation or the start of a union dissolution, even though no change in marital status is reported. However, the fathers remain under observation, and few of them report a union dissolution within five years following the exit of the child and mother.

  18. This does not include polygamous unions or marriages to additional wives while the father is still married to the mother.

  19. Because all single mothers are unmarried at birth, I do not consider union dissolution as a cause of absence for children born to single mothers.

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Acknowledgments

This work would not be possible without the tremendous data collection effort of all individuals involved in the Rufiji HDSS at the Ifakara Health Institute. Special thanks to Honorati Masanja, Sigilbert Mrema, Francis Levira, and Bunzigwa Bofu (Mbonde) for their assistance. My deepest gratitude is also due to Eveline Guebbels for her support and guidance. The article benefitted greatly from the comments of four anonymous reviewers. I would also like to acknowledge the working group on children’s living arrangements at the INDEPTH Network. Finally, I am exceedingly grateful to Sara McLanahan, Germán Rodríguez, Viviana Zelizer, Noreen Goldman, Elizabeth Sully, and Patrick Ishizuka for their invaluable feedback. Partial support for this research was provided by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (Grant #P2CHD047879), the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant #2009085286), the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (Grant #SES-1302828), and the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

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Correspondence to Lauren Gaydosh.

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Gaydosh, L. Childhood Risk of Parental Absence in Tanzania. Demography 52, 1121–1146 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-015-0411-4

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