About

Victor Agadjanian is a Distinguished Professor at UCLA Sociology. His approach to research involves starting from scratch by developing exciting ideas, selecting a place on the world map to explore them, designing plans, building teams, obtaining funding, and learning local languages if necessary. He emphasizes collecting and analyzing data as part of his process, continuously generating new ideas through this cycle. His work reflects a hands-on, exploratory methodology aimed at understanding social phenomena through detailed fieldwork and data analysis.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Geography
• Demography
• Demographic economics
• Economics
• Law
• Economic growth
• Socioeconomics
• Gender studies

Selected publications

• Public Opposition to Abortion in Central Asia’s Rapidly Changing Socio-Normative Context: A Case Study of Kyrgyzstan

  Population Research and Policy Review · 2025-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Socio-Political Turbulence and Ethno-Regional Migration Dynamics in Kyrgyzstan

  Central Asian Survey · 2025-10-10

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Parenthood and Women’s Subjective Well-being in a Low-income, High-fertility Context: A Case Study from Rural Gaza Province, Mozambique

  Population Research and Policy Review · 2025-10-31

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In rural high-fertility settings where people depend on subsistence agriculture, children are expected to provide material support to their parents in later life, with implications for physical health and material well-being of parents. Substantial research has examined these material consequences. Fewer studies have examined the implications of parenthood for subjective well-being in these contexts, in contrast to a larger body of research in low-fertility contexts. The existing studies of parenthood and subjective well-being in high-fertility contexts suggest that this relationship depends on parents' gender and age, but do not distinguish between the impact of parent life stage and the impact of child age and other child characteristics. In this study, we draw on data from a population-based survey of ever-married women in rural Gaza Province, Mozambique, to show how mid-life women's subjective well-being, measured as life satisfaction, is related to the number, age, and residential status of children. We also investigate whether the association between children's characteristics and mother's life satisfaction is mediated by other domains related to anticipated returns to childbearing, such as household economic conditions and mother's physical and mental health. Results show that having young children in the household is negatively associated with life satisfaction, while having older children living outside the country is positively associated with life satisfaction. These associations are not fully explained by potential mechanisms such as economic conditions. We reflect on the implications of these findings in a context of changing livelihood strategies. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11113-025-09978-8.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Correction: Public Opposition To Abortion in Central Asia’s Rapidly Changing Socio-Normative Context: A Case Study of Kyrgyzstan

  Population Research and Policy Review · 2025-08-18

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Polygyny and Fertility: Continuity or Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

  Demography · 2025-10-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This study revisits the polygyny‒fertility relationship in sub-Saharan Africa amid significant sociodemographic transformations, including declines in both fertility rates and the prevalence of polygyny. Using data from multiple rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys across 23 African countries, we examine the contribution of polygyny to reductions in the total fertility rate (TFR), explore how the polygyny‒fertility relationship has evolved over time, and assess changes in the total number of children ever born, number of recent births, ideal fertility, and the desire for another child by polygyny status. Our findings show that the decline in polygyny has substantially contributed to reductions in TFR. While realized fertility-measured by children ever born and recent births-has declined for all married women, reductions have been greater among women in monogamous unions. Fertility preferences, including ideal fertility and the desire for another child, have decreased only among women in monogamous unions, while remaining stable for those in polygynous unions. Additionally, except for children ever born, we find minimal variation in fertility outcomes by wife's rank within polygynous unions. Taken together, these results underscore the complex influence of marriage systems on fertility and highlight the distinct fertility patterns of women in monogamous versus polygynous unions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Men's Migration and Women's Health in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Migration's Economic Returns and Spousal Communication

  International Migration Review · 2024-01-15 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In this study, we investigate the association between men's labor migration and changes in their non-migrating wives' self-rated health (SRH) over time using longitudinal data from rural Mozambique. In addition to comparing wives of non-migrants and wives of migrants, we account for variation in the economic impact of migration and in migrants' phone communication with their spouses. We find that migrants' wives are significantly less likely to report low SRH, compared to non-migrants' wives, net of other factors. However, this net advantage is concentrated among migrants' wives who receive frequent remittances and who report that their households' conditions have improved thanks to husband's migration. We also find that women who engage in frequent phone communication with their migrant husbands have decreased likelihoods of low SRH, compared to migrants' wives who do not communicate with their husbands during their migration and to women married to non-migrants, regardless of other characteristics. We interpret these findings within the context of multifaceted gendered implications of men's migration for left-behind women's health and wellbeing.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Same difference, different sameness: gender-navigating the denominational maze in a Christian African context

  Religion State & Society · 2024-05-22 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The large and growing denominational diversity of sub-Saharan Christianity has attracted considerable scholarly attention, but its implications for individual experiences and well-being remain poorly understood. I examine women's perceptions, assessments, and practices in everyday construction of church idiosyncrasies, clustering, and hierarchies and women's abilities and propensities to navigate along and across the corresponding organisational boundaries in a predominantly Christian setting in rural Mozambique. The analysis uses a combination of data from a census of religious congregations, a household survey, in-depth interviews, and participant observation conducted over a decade. It demonstrates that women's church involvement is socially indispensable yet also subjectively non-binding. Accordingly, church boundaries, while clearly delineated and recognised, are also seen as highly permeable. This permeability facilitates the crossing of those boundaries but may also disincentivise such crossing. Although rural women are increasingly capable of navigating through the religious space, they are generally precluded from exiting that space altogether, as secular options for non-family social anchoring remain very limited in this and other similar low-income patriarchal contexts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Drought and migration: a case study of rural Mozambique

  Population and Environment · 2024-01-05 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Feminizing Patriarchy: Christian Churches and Gender Inequality in Rural Africa

  Sociology of Religion · 2024-07-01 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In dialogue with the cross-national scholarship on gender and religion, the study uses a unique combination of rich qualitative and quantitative data from a predominantly Christian rural sub-Saharan setting to examine how churches modify, yet also sustain and even reinforce, patriarchal norms. It shows how churches replace the traditional, extended family-based model of gender inequality with a pseudo-modern model of individualized conjugal dependency. Although men increasingly disengage from the religious space, the growing feminization of that space does not translate into a more gender-egalitarian narrative: the church nurtures women’s agency yet also channels it to rearrange and reassert their subservience. To acquire legitimacy, church women are pressured to act as collective articulators, promoters, and guarantors of neo-patriarchal values and orders, and in particular, as builders and saviors of matrimonial integrity and viability. These dynamics reflect and are an integral part of the broader gendered constraints and precarities of contemporary rural society.

  PublisherDOI

• Long-term Consequences of Men’s Migration for Women’s Well-being in a Rural African Setting

  Sociological Perspectives · 2023-07-08 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Labor migration is a massive global reality, and its effects on the well-being of nonmigrating household members vary considerably. However, much existing research is limited to cross-sectional or short-term assessments of these effects. This study uses unique longitudinal panel data collected over 12 years in rural Mozambique to examine long-term connections of women's exposure to husband's labor migration with women's material security, their perception of their households' relative economic standing in the community, their overall life satisfaction, and their expectations of future improvements in household conditions. To capture the cumulative quality of such exposure, we use two approaches: one based on migrant remittances ("objective") and the other based on woman's own assessment of migration's impact on the household ("subjective"). The multivariable analyses detect a significant positive association between "objective" migration quality and household assets, regardless of women's current marital status and other characteristics. However, net of household assets, "objective" quality shows a positive association with life satisfaction, but not with perceived relative standing of the household or future expectations. In comparison, "subjective" quality is positively associated with all the outcomes even after controlling for other characteristics. These findings illustrate the gendered complexities of long-term migration impact on nonmigrants' well-being.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R03HD045129

  NIH · $150k · 2007

• NIH Grant R03HD044020

  NIH · $150k · 2006

• NIH Grant R01HD058365

  NIH · $2.0M · 2014

• NIH Grant R21HD048257

  NIH · $305k · 2009

• Behavioral and institutional barriers to HIV prevention among migrant women

  NIH · $415k · 2014–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Sarah R. Hayford

  The Ohio State University

  23 shared

• Cecilia Menjívar

  University of California, Los Angeles

  16 shared

• Natalia Zotova

  Albert Einstein College of Medicine

  14 shared

• Boaventura Manuel Cau

  Eduardo Mondlane University

  9 shared

• Lesia Nedoluzhko

  8 shared

• Scott T. Yabiku

  Pennsylvania State University

  8 shared

• Arusyak Sevoyan

  7 shared

• Premchand Dommaraju

  Nanyang Technological University

  7 shared