Cleaned spouse and marriage data

Malawi

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Reference ID

MWI-MEIRU-SPOUSELINKS-2002-v01

Producer(s)

Professor Amelia (Mia) Crampin

Collections

Karonga HDSS Combined / Harmonized Datasets

Metadata

Documentation in PDF DDI/XML JSON

Created on

Nov 14, 2025

Last modified

Nov 19, 2025

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Marital status (D) (marital)

Data file: all_marital_reports

Overview

Valid: 259912

Invalid: 3427

Type: Discrete

Decimal: 0

Start: 24

End: 24

Width: 1

Range: 0 - 9

Format: Numeric

Questions and instructions

Value	Category	Cases
0	Never married	84882	32.7%
1	Married	141125	54.3%
2	Divorced/separated	18136	7%
3	Widowed	15769	6.1%
4	N/A (dead)	0	0%
8	Unknown	0	0%
9	Missing	3414
Sysmiss		13

Description

Definition

Marital status

Imputation and derivation

Derivation

variable: marital (table[s]: ahs_ahs1, cen_individ, crs_cenm, gp_gpform, css_sei, tb_tbh, tb_tbo, tb_tboto2007, tb_tbx, tb_tbxto2007)
variable: spoucur (table[s]: cen_individ, crs_cenm)
variable: spoupast (table[s]: cen_individ, crs_cenm)
variable: maridill (table[s]: tb_tbxto2007)
variable: idspouse (table[s]: gen_spouse)
variable: marendyr (table[s]: gen_spouse)

Mostly the variables is used as reported but for a few sources it is updated using other data:
la def marital 4 "N/A (dead)", modify
replace marital=0 if spoucur==0 & spoupast<=0 & marital==.
replace marital=1 if spoucur>=1 & spoucur~=. & marital==.
replace marital=2 if spoucur==0 & spoupast>=1 & spoupast~=. & marital==.
replace marital=0 if maridill==0 /*just assumed that not married is never married for these ones for now*/
replace marital=1 if maridill==1
<and after merging in reported spouse ids from gen_spouse:>
replace marital=1 if idspouse~="" & marendyr==.

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