HIV/AIDS, ADULT MORTALITY AND HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION IN RURAL TANZANIA

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to explore the role of adult mortality in household formation, fragmentation and dissolution. It is argued that in times of high adult mortality, as is presently the case in communities heavily affected by the HIV epidemic in Africa, household demography undergoes rapid change and results into other forms of households that cannot be explained within the framework of the ‘normative demographic cycle.’ Even though household studies have proliferated throughout the good part of this century, the role of adult mortality in household formation and dissolution has scarcely attracted any attention. However, discussion in this paper reveals that adult mortality is a significant cause of household instability. Premature death of an adult member of a household (notably husband and/or wife) implies a change in household composition by the sheer fact that a member is lost. But such death has a knock-on effect on membership of a household befallen by death as well as other househol...