Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v26y2017i3p372-431..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Missionary Influence on Marriage Practices: Evidence from the Livingstonia Mission in Malawi†

Author

Listed:
  • Yuya Kudo
Abstract
By focusing on the unique setting of one Protestant mission (Livingstonia Mission) dating back to the late 19th century in Malawi, this study investigates the long-lasting missionary influence on female marital practices, based on individual-level data provided by the Malawi Demographic and Health Survey (2000, 2004 and 2010). Exploiting geographical distance to the influential mission station as a measure of exposure to the missionary influence, together with an abundance of historical, geographic and climate controls, this study finds that the mission encouraged females to postpone their first marriage, while discouraging their engagement in polygynous relationships. In addition, due to the missionary influence, females were also motivated to convert to Christianity as well as to attain academic skills. These findings suggest that Christian attitudes and values, along with the missionary educational investment, may play a role in explaining the missionary influence on marital practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuya Kudo, 2017. "Missionary Influence on Marriage Practices: Evidence from the Livingstonia Mission in Malawi†," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 26(3), pages 372-431.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:26:y:2017:i:3:p:372-431.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejx003
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Selhausen, Felix Meier zu & Weisdorf, Jacob, 2024. "Gender Inequality and the Colonial Economy: Evidence from Anglican Marriage Registers in Urban British Africa," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 711, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    2. Ananyev, Maxim & Poyker, Michael, 2021. "Christian missions and anti-gay attitudes in Africa," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 359-374.
    3. André, Pierre & Dupraz, Yannick, 2023. "Education and polygamy: Evidence from Cameroon," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    4. David Lawson & Mhairi A. Gibson, 2018. "Polygynous marriage and child health in sub-Saharan Africa: What is the evidence for harm?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 39(6), pages 177-208.
    5. Congdon Fors, Heather & Isaksson, Ann-Sofie & Annika, Lindskog, 2023. "Changing local customs: Long-run impacts of the earliest campaigns against female genital cutting," Working Papers in Economics 831, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    6. Stelios Michalopoulos & Elias Papaioannou, 2020. "Historical Legacies and African Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(1), pages 53-128, March.
    7. Congdon Fors, Heather & Isaksson, Ann-Sofie & Lindskog, Annika, 2024. "Changing local customs: The long run impacts of Christian missions on female genital cutting in Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    8. Remi Jedwab & Felix Meier zu Selhausen & Alexander Moradi, 2022. "The economics of missionary expansion: evidence from Africa and implications for development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 149-192, June.
    9. Tabe-Ojong, Martin Paul Jr. & Nshakira-Rukundo, Emmanuel, 2021. "Religiosity and parental educational aspirations for children in Kenya," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 23(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Christianity; early marriage; education; mission; polygyny;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • N37 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Africa; Oceania
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:26:y:2017:i:3:p:372-431.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.