Characteristics of women in consanguineous marriages in Egypt, 1988-2000

Type Journal Article - European Journal of Population/Revue europienne de Demographie
Title Characteristics of women in consanguineous marriages in Egypt, 1988-2000
Author(s)
Volume 24
Issue 2
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2008
Page numbers 185-210
URL http://www.springerlink.com/content/gl67455082m32l67/
Abstract
This article reviews three mechanisms related to autonomy, wealth, and local cultural factors, which are said to underly the high prevalence of consanguineous marriage in Arab societies. It then assesses each of them empirically in two stages. The first uses a pooled dataset constituted by the most recent marriage cohorts in the 1992 and 2000 waves of the Egyptian Demographic and Health Surveys. Three results stand out. The frequency of consanguinity in the most recent marriage cohorts (i) is strongly correlated with the frequency among older cohorts, signaling the strong clustering of underlying institutional (and unobserved) supports; (ii) tends to be more common among women who are poorer in absolute term, though wealthier than average in their communities; and (iii) varies temporally and across the rural–urban divide in its relationship to women’s autonomy. A subsidiary analysis, using only the 2000 data, then identifies wealth and autonomy differences between first cousin patrilateral and matrilateral wives.

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