Socioeconomic and Institutional Correlates of Family Formation: Khartoum, Sudan, 1945-75

This paper examines socioeconomic and institutional determinants of marriage timing in Khartoum Sudan. Using a 1975 survey which was part of the Changing African Family Project the authors examine age at marriage between 1945 and 1975. Age at marriage rose sharply across the later years of the study--over 2 years across the 1965-1975 marriage cohorts. The theoretical approach stresses recognition of the institutional context. Special attention focuses on living with husbands parents after marriage and marring endogamously. Both are associated with sharply reduced ages at marriage but both these institutional patterns persist throughout the period examined and cannot account for the observed change. The more educated and urban born marry later. Moreover increasing levels of education and larger proportions urban born explain a small proportion of the observed increase in age at marriage but the increase is best described as recent rapid and pervasive. The authors suggest that structural changes--occupational differentiation urbanization and similar factors--laid the groundwork for ideological change; the impact of modernization may not be limited to those directly affected by it. Furthermore imported movies and the Sudanese Women Union may have introduced new ideas.