Layers of Socioeconomic Vulnerability in Malawi in the Context of the Millennium Development Goals

Table 1

Descriptive statistics of the study population, Malawi DHS 2010.

Characteristics	Number (percentage)
Wealth Index
Poorest	4,539 (19.7)
Poorer	4,506 (19.6)
Middle	4,721 (20.5)
Richer	4,669 (20.4)
Richest	4,555 (19.8)
Mean age*	28.1 (9.3)
Current marital status**
Never married	4,526 (19.7)
Married/cohabiting	15,445 (67.1)
Widowed/divorced/separated	3,049 (13.3)
Sex of household head
Male	16,770 (72.9)
Female	6,250 (27.2)
Region of Residence
Northern	4,189 (18.2)
Central	7,862 (34.2)
Southern	10,969 (47.7)
Religion
Mainstream Christianity	10,725 (47.0)
Other Christianity	9,559 (41.9)
Islam	2,530 (11.1)
Formal schooling
None	3,390 (14.7)
Some schooling	19,630 (85.3)
Number of women	23,020 (100.0)

∗Standard deviation in parentheses. Some percentages may not add up to 100 due to rounding of figures, and sample sizes for some subcategories may not add up to the total due to sample modifications (e.g., Section 2.2.6 on religion).∗∗Cohabiting women accounted for 8.5% of the sample, whereas the widowed, divorced, and separated accounted for 3.7%, 5.1% and 4.4% of the sample, respectively. Differences between wealth index and each of the independent variables were statistically significant (𝑃<0.001).