Indigenous Age-Grade Initiation Exposure and Adult Psychological Distress in Kenyan Bukusu Households: A Sibling-Comparison Estimation of Rite Timing and Disclosure Norms

Bukusu age-grade initiation (khukhwaluka) is a household-level rite of passage whose psychological sequelae remain poorly specified because exposure is confounded with family background and because disclosure norms suppress reporting. The framework specifies a household fixed-effects specification in which distress is regressed on initiation timing, disclosure exposure and their interaction, with sibling-pair clustering and a bounding strategy for differential disclosure. The contribution is methodological and conceptual rather than empirical: it formalises the disclosure-norm problem as a species of differential measurement error whose direction is signed by the ritual's own norms of silence, and it derives the conditions under which sibling comparison recovers a credible timing effect. The paper also situates the framework within the DHS Program's adult-mortality indicator for African women, which supplies the demographic backdrop against which Bukusu households time initiation. No primary data were collected; the framework is offered as a design for prospective field implementation.