Budget Amount *help |
¥4,030,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥930,000)
Fiscal Year 2016: ¥130,000 (Direct Cost: ¥100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥30,000)
Fiscal Year 2015: ¥130,000 (Direct Cost: ¥100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥30,000)
Fiscal Year 2014: ¥2,990,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥690,000)
Fiscal Year 2013: ¥780,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥180,000)
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Outline of Final Research Achievements |
Levirate marriage, whereby a widow is inherited by male relatives of her deceased husband, has anecdotally been viewed as an informal safety net for widows. This study investigates why this widespread practice in sub-Saharan Africa has recently been disappearing. As a developed game-theoretic analysis reveals, female empowerment renders this widespread practice redundant because it increases widows' reservation utility. HIV/AIDS also discourages a husband's clan from inheriting a widow who loses her husband to HIV/AIDS, reducing her remarriage prospects and thus, reservation utility because she is likely to be HIV positive. By exploiting long-term household panel data drawn from rural Tanzania and testing multiple theoretical predictions, this study finds that HIV/AIDS is primarily responsible for the deterioration of levirate marriage. Young widows in Africa may need some form of social protection against the influence of HIV/AIDS.
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