Identifying Factors for Marriage Breakdown at Debre Birhan Town of Ethiopia: Logistic and Survival Analysis

Abstract

Marriage breakdown is a condition in which partners of a marital union cease to live together especially due to divorce or separation. The main objective of this study is identifying factors for marriage breakdown. To achieve this sample of 576 respondents was taken using stratified random sampling method, during March 2012. From descriptive statistics we have seen that about 41.7% of the first marriage was broken in Debre Birhan town. A series of statistical analysis have done: factors for marriage breakdown were analyzed using binary logistic regression and time to marriage breakdown was analyzed by Cox proportional hazard model. From the binary logistic regression we have seen that being infertile, marry at age of 12-18 years (early marriage), sexual incompatibility, unfaithfulness, absence of discussion and illiterate husbands are exposed to the risk of marriage break down. From the Cox proportional hazard model we have seen that; spouses who are infertile, marry b/n 12-18 years for females, too low (<4 years) or too high (>10 years) age gap, having different religion, sexual incompatibility and unfaithfulness leads to the shorter survival time of first marriage. Finally we have recommend that Spouses should have a habit of discussion, specially on sexual issue, youth should insure that they have the potential to pursue marriage its responsibility before coming to the institution. Awareness creation and counseling service should have given about the effect of early marriage, the importance of legal- marriage, impact of religion difference of spouses and gender equality.