Women’s Social Ties and Psychosocial Well-Being in a Resource-Limited Patriarchal Setting: A Longitudinal Perspective

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PROJECT SUMMARY The proposed study will investigate midlife women's relationships and support exchanges with their late- adolescent and adult children, as well as with other relatives and non-relatives, and the implications of these relationships and exchanges for women's psychosocial well-being in a rural sub-Saharan setting. The study will leverage and expand upon a unique panel database consisting of five rounds of survey and qualitative data collected from rural women between 2006 and 2018 as part of the project Men's Migrations and Women's Lives in Mozambique. We propose to extend this existing panel by conducting two new waves of survey and qualitative data collection three years apart. The new data will focus on material, instrumental, and socio- emotional support exchanges between panel participants and their children, relatives, in-laws, and non- relatives and on panel participants' life satisfaction, happiness, self-efficacy, depression, anxiety, and related psychosocial outcomes. The analyses of the dynamics of social interactions and exchanges and of their consequences for women's psychosocial well-being between the two proposed waves will integrate the existing panel data on participants' marital and reproductive trajectories, experience of husband's labor migration, history of co-residence with children and investment in their health and education, as well as changes in women's physical health and economic conditions, to elicit longer-term processes that shape the outcomes of interest. The project will be carried out by an experienced bi-national multidisciplinary team with complementary expertise and a long record of successful research collaboration. The results of the study will contribute to greater understanding of midlife rural women's health and well-being in rapidly changing resource-limited patriarchal settings and will inform policies aimed at improving the welfare of this large and vulnerable population segment.