Interdisciplinary sociology of rural funeral-insurance contribution calls and household asset liquidation in Uganda: an event-study of contribution-timing thresholds

Funeral insurance schemes in rural Uganda collect contributions through timed calls that arrive with little warning, and households facing those calls must decide whether to sell productive assets to meet them. The framework treats the contribution call as a threshold event and specifies how the interval between call and deadline, the size of the call relative to available cash, and the position of the call within the agricultural calendar jointly determine whether a household crosses from routine coping into asset sale. Drawing on sociological theories of money, reciprocity and household financial practice, the paper specifies an event-study design in which contribution calls are the event, asset sales are the outcome, and timing thresholds are the parameters of interest. The framework is illustrated with reference to a real DHS Program indicator on family planning messages at community meetings, drawn from 15 African country surveys conducted between 2021 and 2025, which shows a mean of 29.733 and a standard deviation of 17.495 across the 15 observations. It argues that the timing of calls, not only their size, is a sociologically consequential feature of funeral insurance and a plausible driver of rural asset loss.