Love Alone is Not Enough: The Challenges of Separation and Divorce Among Young Couples in Ethiopia

This policy brief draws on qualitative research relating to young people in four communities (one urban and three rural) who are part of the Young Lives longitudinal study of 3,000 children and young people in Ethiopia. Divorce and separation among young people is a rarely studied topic, and our insights show the difficulties young people face in their relationships and marriages, and the impacts of poverty, age, gender and location.

This brief is based on the following working paper: Pankhurst, A. and G. Crivello (2020) When Things Fall Apart: Separation and Divorce Among Adolescents and Young Couples in Ethiopia, Young Lives Working Paper 193, Oxford: Young Lives and is one of a set of eight briefs summarising key findings and policy implications from eight corresponding working papers based on Young Lives fifth-wave qualitative research in 2019.