Maternal cumulative prevalence measures of child mortality show heavy burden in sub-Saharan Africa.

We advance a set of population-level indicators that quantify the prevalence of mothers who have ever experienced an infant, under 5-y-old child, or any-age child die. The maternal cumulative prevalence of infant mortality (mIM), the maternal cumulative prevalence of under 5 mortality (mU5M), and the maternal cumulative prevalence of offspring mortality (mOM) bring theoretical and practical value to a variety of disciplines. Here we introduce maternal cumulative prevalence measures of mortality for multiple age groups of mothers in 20 sub-Saharan African countries with Demographic and Health Surveys data spanning more than two decades. The exercise demonstrates the persistently high prevalence of African mothers who have ever experienced a child die. In some African countries, more than one-half of 45- to 49-y-old mothers have experienced the death of a child under age 5, and nearly two-thirds have experienced the death of any child, irrespective of age. Fewer young mothers have experienced a child die, yet in many countries, up to one-third have. Our results show that the mIM and mU5M can follow distinct trajectories from the infant mortality rate (IMR) and under 5 mortality rate (U5MR), offering an experiential view of mortality decline that annualized measures conceal. These measures can be adapted to quantify the prevalence of recurrent offspring mortality (mROM) and calculated for subgroups to identify within-country inequality in the mortality burden. These indicators can be used to improve current understandings of mortality change, bereavement as a public health threat, and population dynamics.

Changing Childbearing Norms During an Era of ART Expansion in Malawi, 2009 to 2015.

Community norms shape the childbearing goals and behaviors of persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) but little is known about how norms around HIV-positive childbearing have changed with expanded access to antiretroviral treatment (ART). We analyze data collected in 2009 and 2015 by the Tsogolo la Thanzi (TLT) project-a longitudinal, population-based study of young adults in southern Malawi. Respondents were asked about the acceptability of childbearing using vignettes that varied a hypothetical couple's HIV status and number of children. We assess mean differences in support for childbearing over time and by respondent gender and serostatus. The acceptability of childbearing for PLWHA increased dramatically over the 6-year period; however, support levels varied based on a couple's current number of children and whether they were seropositive concordant or discordant. Differences in attitudes by gender and HIV status diminished over time, pointing to a population-level convergence in norms about acceptable childbearing.

The Enduring Case for Fertility Desires.

Persistently high levels of unintended fertility, combined with evidence that over- and underachieved fertility are typical and not exceptional, have prompted researchers to question the utility of fertility desires writ large. In this study, we elaborate this paradox: widespread unintendedness and meaningful, highly predictive fertility desires can and do coexist. Using data from Malawi, we demonstrate the predictive validity of numeric fertility timing desires over both four-month and one-year periods. We find that fertility timing desires are highly predictive of pregnancy and that they follow a gradient wherein the likelihood of pregnancy decreases in correspondence with desired time to next birth. This finding holds despite the simultaneous observation of high levels of unintended pregnancy in our sample. Discordance between desires and behaviors reflects constraints to achieving one's fertility and the fluidity of desires but not their irrelevance. Fertility desires remain an essential-if sometimes blunt-tool in the demographers' toolkit.

Tsogolo la Thanzi: A Longitudinal Study of Young Adults Living in Malawi's HIV Epidemic.

Tsogolo la Thanzi (TLT) was designed to study how young adults navigate sexual relationships and childbearing during a generalized HIV epidemic. TLT began in 2009 with a population-representative sample of 1,505 women and 574 men between the ages of 15 and 25 living in Balaka, southern Malawi, where regional adult HIV prevalence then stood at 15 percent. The first phase (2009-11) included a series of eight interviews, spaced four months apart. During this time, women's romantic and sexual partners enrolled in the study on an ongoing basis. A refresher sample of 315 women was added in 2012. Seventy-eight percent of respondents were re-interviewed in the second phase of TLT (2015), which consisted of follow-up interviews approximately 3.5 years after the previous interview (ages 21-31). At each wave, detailed information about fertility intentions and behaviors, relationships, sexual behavior, health, and a range of sociodemographic and economic traits was gathered by means of face-to-face surveys. Biomarkers for HIV and pregnancy were also collected. Distinguishing features include: a population-representative sample, closely spaced data collection, dyadic data on couples over time, and an experimental approach to HIV testing and counseling. Data are available through restricted data-user agreements managed by Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR) at the University of Michigan.

Data Collection as Disruption: Insights from a Longitudinal Study of Young Adulthood.

Research disrupts the social world, often by making respondents aware that they are being observed or by instigating reflection upon particular aspects of life via the very act of asking questions. Building on insights from the first Hawthorne studies, reflexive ethnographers, and methodologists concerned with panel conditioning, we draw on six years of research within a community in southern Malawi to introduce a conceptual framework for theorizing disruption in observational research. We present a series of poignant-yet-typical tales from the field and two additional tools-the refresher-sample-as-comparison and study-focused ethnography-for measuring disruption empirically in a longitudinal study. We find evidence of study effects in many domains of life that relate directly to our scope of inquiry (i.e., union formation, fertility) and in some that extend beyond it (i.e., health). Moreover, some study effects were already known and discussed in the broader community, which was also affected by our research in unintended ways. We conclude that the assumption of non-interactivity in observational research is shaky at best, urging data-gatherers and users to think more seriously about the role of disruption in their work.

Ideals as Anchors for Relationship Experiences.

Research on young-adult sexuality in sub-Saharan Africa typically conceptualizes sex as an individual-level risk behavior. We introduce a new approach that connects the conditions surrounding the initiation of sex with subsequent relationship well-being, examines relationships as sequences of interdependent events, and indexes relationship experiences to individually held ideals. New card-sort data from southern Malawi capture young women's relationship experiences and their ideals in a sequential framework. Using optimal matching, we measure the distance between ideal and experienced relationship sequences to (1) assess the associations between ideological congruence and perceived relationship well-being, (2) compare this ideal-based approach to other experience-based alternatives, and (3) identify individual- and couple-level correlates of congruence between ideals and experiences in the romantic realm. We show that congruence between ideals and experiences conveys relationship well-being along four dimensions: expressions of love and support, robust communication habits, perceived biological safety, and perceived relationship stability. We further show that congruence is patterned by socioeconomic status and supported by shared ideals within romantic dyads. We argue that conceiving of ideals as anchors for how sexual experiences are manifest advances current understandings of romantic relationships, and we suggest that this approach has applications for other domains of life.

Sibling support and the educational prospects of young adults in Malawi.

BACKGROUND: Extended kin networks are an important social and economic resource in Africa. Existing research has focused primarily on intergenerational ties, but much less is known about "lateral" ties, such as those between siblings. In contexts of high adult mortality (i.e., fewer parents and grandparents) sibling interdependencies may assume heightened importance, especially during the transition to adulthood. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we extend the resource dilution perspective that dominates research on sibling relationships in early childhood and propose an alternate framework in which siblings represent a source of economic support that contributes positively to educational outcomes at later stages of the life course. METHODS: We draw upon longitudinal data from young adults (age 15-18) in southern Malawi to assess the scope and magnitude of economic transfers among sibship sets. We then explore the relationships between sibship size, net economic transfers between siblings, and four measures of educational progress. RESULTS: First, exchanges of economic support between siblings are pervasive in the Malawian context and patterned, especially by birth order. Second, economic support from siblings is positively associated with educational attainment, as well as with the odds of being at grade level in school, both contemporaneously and prospectively. CONCLUSIONS: During young-adulthood, economic support from siblings acts as a buffer against the negative association between sibship size and schooling outcomes that has been documented at earlier ages. COMMENTS: We question the established notion that siblings unilaterally subtract from resource pools, and argue that sibling support may be consequential for a wide range of demographic outcomes in a variety of cultural contexts. Our findings point to the need for additional research on the importance of lateral kinship ties across cultural settings and throughout the life course.

Integrating the Demographic and Health Surveys, IPUMS-I, and TerraPopulus to Explore Mortality and Health Outcomes at the District Level in Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania.

In this paper, we first show how the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) can be integrated with other data sources to expand the types of variables available for analysis of population and health outcomes. Second, we demonstrate one particular example of such integration by modelling the social, physical, and built environment determinants of health outcomes at the district level in Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania. To do so, we created district-level measures of a number of variables from the DHS, and then merged them with district-level data from the IPUMS, an environmental data set called TerraPopulus, and other sources. We find that it is feasible to combine the DHS with other data sources, and that many health and environment indicators are heterogeneous within countries, justifying further analysis at low levels of geography and suggesting benefits to using such techniques to design fine-grained programmatic interventions.

U.S. congregations' provision of programs or activities for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Using data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. congregations, this study estimates the proportion of congregations that provide programs or activities that serve people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and examines the effects of congregational characteristics on the likelihood of having them. The analysis finds that 5.6% (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.034-0.078) of U.S. congregations (roughly 18,500 (95% CI, 11,300-25,800) congregations) provide programs or activities to PLWHA. Numerous congregational characteristics increase the likelihood that congregations provide them: the presence of openly HIV positive people in the congregation, having a group that assesses their community's needs, religious tradition, and openness to gays and lesbians. By building on previous research, this study provides further information about the scope of religious congregations' involvement with PLWHA and also insight into which congregations may be willing to collaborate with other organizations to provide care for PLWHA.

Best-friend reports: a tool for measuring the prevalence of sensitive behaviors.

We introduce the best-friend methodology for using surveys to measure the population prevalence of sensitive behaviors. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this tool by comparing self-reports to best-friend reports of sexual behavior and abortion history among young women in Malawi (n = 1493). Best-friend reports reveal higher and more believable estimates of abortion and multiple sexual partners. In contexts in which best friends commonly discuss such behaviors, best-friend reports are an inexpensive and easily implemented tool.

The third therapeutic system: faith healing strategies in the context of a generalized AIDS epidemic.

Faith healing in sub-Saharan Africa has primarily been studied qualitatively among Pentecostal-Charismatic groups, and considered as its own phenomenon with little attention to its relationship to other modes of healing. Using data from Malawi, a religiously diverse African country with high HIV prevalence, we find that faith healing is pervasive across multiple religious traditions. For individuals, attending a faith healing congregation is associated with lower levels of generalized worry about AIDS, and this association is driven by those who switched churches before AIDS became widespread in rural areas. Use of condoms and traditional medicine are, on the other hand, positively associated with worry about AIDS. We argue that faith healing can be understood as a third therapeutic system that coexists with the well-documented biomedical and traditional systems. The success of faith healing approaches lies in their unique ability to combine individual-pragmatic and communal-ritualized aspects of healing to inform interpretations of the AIDS epidemic and its consequences.

Uncertainty and Fertility in a Generalized AIDS Epidemic.

Sociologists widely acknowledge that uncertainty matters for decision making, but they rarely measure it directly. In this article, we demonstrate the importance of theorizing about, measuring, and analyzing uncertainty as experienced by individuals. We adapt a novel probabilistic solicitation technique to measure personal uncertainty about HIV status in a high HIV prevalence area of southern Malawi. Using data from 2,000 young adults (ages 15 to 25 years), we demonstrate that uncertainty about HIV status is widespread and that it expands as young adults assess their proximate and distant futures. In conceptualizing HIV status as something more than sero-status itself, we gain insight into how what individuals know they don't know influences their lives. Young people who are uncertain about their HIV status express desires to accelerate their childbearing relative to their counterparts who are certain they are uninfected. Our approach and findings show that personal uncertainty is a measurable and meaningful phenomenon that can illuminate much about individuals' aspirations and behaviors.

Religious differences in female genital cutting: a case study from Burkina Faso.

The relationship between religious obligations and female genital cutting is explored using data from Burkina Faso, a religiously and ethnically diverse country where approximately three-quarters of adult women are circumcised. Data from the 2003 Burkina Faso Demographic and Health Survey are used to estimate multilevel models of religious variation in the intergenerational transmission of female genital cutting. Differences between Christians, Muslims, and adherents of traditional religions are reported, along with an assessment of the extent to which individual and community characteristics account for religious differences. Religious variation in the intergenerational transmission of female genital cutting is largely explained by specific religious beliefs and by contextual rather than individual characteristics. Although Muslim women are more likely to have their daughters circumcised, the findings suggest the importance of a collective rather than individual Muslim identity for the continuation of the practice.

Global burden of maternal bereavement: indicators of the cumulative prevalence of child loss.

BACKGROUND: We provide country-level estimates of the cumulative prevalence of mothers bereaved by a child's death in 170 countries and territories. METHODS: We generate indicators of the cumulative prevalence of mothers who have had an infant, under-five-year-old or any-age child ever die by using publicly available survey data in 89 countries and an indirect approach that combines formal kinship models and life-table methods in an additional 81 countries. We label these measures the maternal cumulative prevalence of infant mortality (mIM), under-five mortality (mU5M) and offspring mortality (mOM) and generate prevalence estimates for 20-44-year-old and 45-49-year-old mothers. RESULTS: In several Asian and European countries, the mIM and mU5M are below 10 per 1000 mothers yet exceed 200 per 1000 mothers in several Middle Eastern and African countries. Global inequality in mothers' experience of child loss is enormous: mothers in high-mortality-burden African countries are more than 100 times more likely to have had a child die than mothers in low-mortality-burden Asian and European countries. In more than 20 African countries, the mOM exceeds 500 per 1000 mothers, meaning that it is typical for a surviving 45-49-year-old mother to be bereaved. DISCUSSION: The study reveals enormous global disparities in mothers' experience of child loss and identifies a need for more research on the downstream mental and physical health risks associated with parental bereavement.

The Malawi Religion Project: Data collection and selected analyses.

Scholars have recently become increasingly interested in the role religion plays in the responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Here, we present the Malawi Religion Project (MRP), which provides data to examine the relationship between religion and HIV/AIDS through surveys and in-depth interviews with denominational leaders, congregational leaders, and congregation members in three districts of rural Malawi. In the paper, we outline existing perspectives on the religion-HIV/AIDS link, describe the MRP's design, implementation, and subsequent data; provide initial evidence for a series of general research hypotheses; and describe how these data can be used both to extend explorations of these relationships further and as a model for gathering similar data in other contexts. In particular we highlight the unique possibilities this project provides for analyses that link MRP data to the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project. These linked data produce a multi-level data set covering individuals, congregations and their communities, allowing empirical research on religion, HIV/AIDS risk, related behaviors, attitudes, and norms.

Beyond Denomination: The Relationship between Religion and Family Planning in Rural Malawi.

Despite the centrality of religion and fertility to life in rural Africa, the relationship between the two remains poorly understood. The study presented here uses unique integrated individual and congregational level data from rural Malawi to examine religious influences on contraceptive use. In this religiously diverse population, we find evidence that the particular characteristics of a congregation-leader's positive attitudes toward family planning and discussion of sexual morality, which do not fall along broad denominational lines-are more relevant than denominational categories for predicting women's contraceptive use. We further find evidence for a relationship between religious socialization and contraceptive behavior.

Race/ethnicity, religious involvement, and domestic violence.

The authors explored the relationship between religious involvement and intimate partner violence by analyzing data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households. They found that: (a) religious involvement is correlated with reduced levels of domestic violence; (b) levels of domestic violence vary by race/ethnicity; (c) the effects of religious involvement on domestic violence vary by race/ethnicity; and (d) religious involvement, specifically church attendance, protects against domestic violence, and this protective effect is stronger for African American men and women and for Hispanic men, groups that, for a variety of reasons, experience elevated risk for this type of violence.

Awareness and perceived fairness of Option B+ in Malawi: A population-level perspective

INTRODUCTION: Policies for rationing antiretroviral therapy (ART) have been subject to on-going ethical debates. Introduced in Malawi in 2011, Option B+ prioritized HIV-positive pregnant women for lifelong ART regardless of the underlying state of their immune system, shifting the logic of allocation away from medical eligibility. Despite the rapid expansion of this policy, we know little about how it has been understood and interpreted by the people it affects. METHODS: We assessed awareness and perceived fairness of the prioritization system for ART among a population-based sample of young women (n = 1440) and their partners (n = 574) in southern Malawi. We use a card-sort technique to elicit understandings of who gets ART under Option B+ and who should be prioritized, and we compare perceptions to actual ART policy using sequence analysis and optimal matching. We then use ordered logistic regression to identify the factors associated with policy awareness. RESULTS: In 2015, only 30.7% of women and 21.1% of male partners understood how ART was being distributed. There was widespread confusion around whether otherwise healthy HIV-positive pregnant women could access ART under Option B + . Nonetheless, more young adults thought that the fairest policy should prioritize such women than believed the actual policy did. Women who were older, more educated or had recently engaged with the health system through antenatal care or ART had more accurate understandings of Option B + . Among men, policy awareness was lower, and was patterned only by education. CONCLUSION: Although most respondents were unaware that Option B+ afforded ART access to healthy-pregnant women, Malawians support the prioritization of pregnant women. Countries adopting Option B+ or other new ART policies such as universal test-and-treat should communicate the policies and their rationales to the public - such transparency would be more consistent with a fair and ethical process and could additionally serve to clarify confusion and enhance retention.​​.

Brief Report: Health-Seeking Behavior and Symptoms Associated With Early HIV Infection: Results From a Population-Based Cohort in Southern Malawi.

HIV transmission is most likely to occur during the first few months after infection, yet few cases are identified during this period. Using a population-based cohort of young Malawian women, we identify the distinct symptomology and health-seeking behavior marking early HIV infection by comparing it with periods of seronegativity and chronic infection. During early HIV infection, women are more likely to report malaria-like symptoms and visit clinics for malaria care. In malaria-endemic contexts, where acute HIV symptoms are commonly mistaken for malaria, early diagnostic HIV testing and counseling should be integrated into health care settings where people commonly seek treatment for malaria.