Family Formation Trends in Africa Since 1994: Taking Stock and Looking Forward
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Drawing on published secondary data from various sources, this paper explores trends in family formation processes in Africa over the last three decades. Particular focus is placed on fertility, marriage, cohabitation, and union dissolution through divorce. Given the central role occupied by the family institution in the African social organisation, a deeper understanding of these processes is of critical importance as they have implications for the well-being of families as well as for overall societal well-being and cohesion. The findings are consistent with those of previous studies and show that despite being persistently higher than in other world regions and notwithstanding regional and country differences in terms of pace and magnitude, there is a clear downward trend in the levels of fertility in Africa. Another notable aspect of Africa’s fertility transition is the concerningly high level of adolescent fertility, which is the highest in the world. In terms of nuptiality trends, the overall findings illuminate trends that point to decreased marriage prevalence as well as increased prevalence of cohabitation and union dissolution through divorce. This paper argues that, contrary to emerging insinuations in the literature, the observed family formation trends do not place Africa in the second demographic transition. Despite this, the implications of the trends for family well-being are noteworthy. Hence, the paper concludes with research and policy recommendations to address these potential implications in the post-2024 era.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.013 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".