Gifting Relationships and School Dropout in Rural Malawi: Examining Differences by Gender and Poverty Level.

Research from sub-Saharan Africa has shown the heightened likelihood of dropping out of school for students in sexual relationships, particularly girls. However, our knowledge is limited as to whether the risk of school dropout is exacerbated by the exchange of gifts in the relationship as well as students' poverty level. Drawing on longitudinal survey data from rural Malawi, this study explores these questions, examining differences by gender and poverty level in the association between being in a sexual relationship in which gifts are exchanged and school dropout for adolescents in primary school. Our findings show that for both boys and girls, being in a gifting relationship heightens the risk of school dropout and eliminates the protective advantages of being nonpoor on dropout. However, non-gifting sexual relationships also erase the protective advantage of being nonpoor for girls, but not for boys. These results point to the value of examining poverty-gender interactions to gain a more nuanced understanding of the impact of sexual relationships on adolescent trajectories.

A DISCURSIVE SPECTRUM: The Narrative of Kenya's 'Neglected' Boy Child.

In this article, I examine a narrative that on the surface could be backlash to gender equality efforts: that after years of policy attention to girls, Kenya's "boy child" has been neglected. Through a content analysis of Kenyan online newspaper texts spanning the past two decades, I chart the evolution of this discourse, finding that it was present as early as 2000, intensified around 2010, and began to produce concrete actions around 2013. I argue that the narrative is a reaction to expanded women's rights, but not always in the sense of negative backlash. Some boy child claims-makers were indeed concerned with a decline in men's power. However, others, mostly women, used the boy child narrative to redirect attention to issues that profoundly affect the well-being of women such as violence and the struggle to find a partner. These results point to the value of a discursive spectrum approach for analysis of potential backlash to gender equality as well as discussions around policy attention to boys and men.

Divorce, living arrangements, and material well-being during the transition to adulthood in rural Malawi.

In this paper, we use longitudinal data to investigate how parental death and divorce influence young women's own experience of divorce in Malawi, a setting where women marry relatively early and unions are fragile. We find that maternal death and parental divorce are positively associated with divorce for young women but, after controlling for socio-demographic and marital characteristics, only the association with maternal death remains statistically significant. Maternal and paternal death are both strongly associated with women's post-divorce living arrangements, which in turn affects their material well-being. This finding suggests that divorcing at a young age shapes the subsequent life chances of women; although some women return to their parental home and may have the opportunity to reset the transition to adulthood, other women begin their 20s as head of their own household and with considerable material disadvantage.

A scoping review of survey research with gender minority adolescents and youth in low and middle-income countries.

BACKGROUND: Survey data that categorizes gender identity in binary terms and conflates sex and gender limits knowledge around the experience of gender minority populations, whose gender identity or expression does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth. In this review, we outline the existing survey research on the experience of a gender minority demographic for whom there is particularly limited data: adolescents and youth in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). METHODS: This paper is a scoping review of peer-reviewed articles, published in English, that use survey data to examine the experience of gender minority adolescents and youth in LMICs. We conducted a search on two major databases using key terms related to gender identity, adolescence and youth, and country and region. This search yielded 385 articles. Following a team-conducted review, we retained 33 articles for the final analysis. RESULTS: Our review shows that surveys with adolescents and youth in LMICs are increasingly including questions and taking sampling approaches that allow gender minority populations to be visible in survey data. Surveys that do so are largely focused in upper middle-income countries (n = 24), rather than lower middle-income or low-income countries, with South East Asia a notable sub-region of focus (n = 15). Sexual health, mental health, and violence are key topics of interest. Most of the surveys rely on some form of network-driven sampling focused on sexual and/or gender minorities (n = 22). The studies vary in how they ask about gender identity, both in terms of question formulation and the answer categories that are offered, as well as the extent to which they describe the questions in the article text. CONCLUSIONS: This review reveals a growing body of work that provides important insights into the experiences of gender minority adolescents and youth in LMICs. More studies could integrate these approaches, but it must be done in a way that is thoughtful about cultural and political context. Given the relatively nascent nature of such research, we encourage scholars to continue providing details on methodology, including around participant recruitment and the development of gender identity questions. This information would be valuable for researchers seeking to better include gender minorities and their experiences in survey research, but who might be daunted methodologically.

A New Look at the Living Arrangements of Older Americans Using Multistate Life Tables.

OBJECTIVES: We extend existing research on the living arrangements of older Americans by focusing on geographic proximity to children, examining transitions in living arrangements across older ages, and describing differences by both race/ethnicity and educational attainment. METHOD: We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) over a period of 10 years (2000-2010) to construct multistate life tables. These analyses allow us to describe the lives of older Americans between ages 65 and 90 in terms of the number of expected years of life in different living arrangements, reflecting both mortality and living arrangement transitions. RESULTS: Americans spend a substantial proportion of later life living near, but not with, adult children. There is a good deal of change in living arrangements at older ages and living arrangement-specific life expectancy differs markedly by race/ethnicity and educational attainment. However, overall life expectancy is not strongly related to living arrangements at age 65. DISCUSSION: Multistate life tables, constructed separately by sex, race/ethnicity, and educational attainment, provide a comprehensive description of sociodemographic differences in living arrangements across older ages in the United States. We discuss the potential implications of these differences for access to support and the exacerbation or mitigation of inequalities at older ages.

Making Sense of Marriage: Gender and the Transition to Adulthood in Nairobi, Kenya.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to examine how young people in Nairobi, Kenya, are making sense of marriage, both in terms of their own lives and its social significance. BACKGROUND: In many sub-Saharan African communities, marriage has been a fundamental marker of the transition to adulthood. However, union formation is changing, particularly in urban areas-partnering is occurring later and nonmarital cohabitation is increasingly common with the pathways to union formation differing by gender. Young people's perspectives on marriage are valuable for a deeper understanding of these trends. METHOD: A total of 74 in-depth interviews with youth living in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, were qualitatively analyzed with particular attention to personal and normative understandings of marriage along with how they vary by gender. RESULTS: Marriage emerged as an important part of most respondents' life projects, whether or not they considered it key to socially recognized adulthood. Attitudes differed by gender, with young women's greater ambivalence and aversion toward marriage, particularly early marriage, contrasting with young men's frustrated desire for marriage amidst economic constraints. Young men's main worry about marriage was not being able to support a family, whereas young women were often concerned that marrying would thwart their aspirations regarding education and work. CONCLUSION: Marriage continues to be a significant social marker of adulthood despite a shifting demographic reality. Differences in young people's attitudes are related to gendered concerns around marriage and economic independence.