Levirate marriage has anecdotally been considered informal insurance for widows that have limited property
rights. According to this practice, a widow is inherited by male relatives of her deceased husband. This study
investigates why this widespread practice in sub-Saharan Africa has recently been disappearing. A developed
game-theoretic analysis reveals that levirate marriage arises as a pure strategy subgame perfect equilibrium, when
a husband’s clan desires to keep children of the deceased within its extended family and widows have limited
independent livelihood means. Two mechanisms erode this practice. First, female empowerment renders levirate
marriage unneeded because it increases widows’ reservation utility. Second, HIV/AIDS discourages a husband’s
clan from inheriting a widow that lost her husband due to HIV/AIDS while reducing her remarriage prospects,
thus reservation utility, because she is likely HIV-positive. Consequently, widows’ welfare tends to decline (increase)
in association with the erosion of levirate marriage driven by HIV/AIDS (female empowerment). By exploiting
long-term household panel data drawn from rural Tanzania and testing multiple theoretical predictions relevant to
widows’ welfare and women’s fertility, this study finds that HIV/AIDS has primarily disintegrated levirate marriage.
Young widows in Africa may need a form of social protection against the influence of HIV/AIDS.