The sociodemographic correlates of birth intervals in Ghana
Date
1994
Authors
Dugbaza, Tetteh
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Abstract
Fertility in Ghana is high, and stands at about seven children per woman
by the end of her reproductive period. High fertility in Ghana is consistent
with a model of early and universal marriage, an early age at entry into
motherhood, and reproduction throughout the reproductive years of a
woman. Both entry into marriage and motherhood are concentrated in
only a few years. The median age at first marriage is about 18 years, and by
24 years of age, 90 per cent of women are already married. Similarly, the
median age at first motherhood is just under 20 years, with about 90 per
cent of women having their first child before they are 27 years old. These
characteristics of entry into marriage and into motherhood appear to have
remained unchanged for at least the 30 years before the Ghana Fertility
Survey in 1979-80, or over the lifetime of the birth cohorts covered in the
survey. There are variations in the age at first marriage and first
motherhood by education, which is the most important variable
influencing the timing of the commencement of family formation in
Ghana. Women with at least secondary school or higher education marry
and have their first child some four to six years later than other categories
of women. Socioeconomic and cultural characteristics of women such as
ethnicity, rural or urban residence, religion and use of contraception do
not have any substantial effect on entry into marriage and motherhood.
The median interval between first marriage and the birth of the first
child is about 17 months. Like the ages at first marriage and first birth, this
interval is strongly influenced by education and premarital employment
and less so by any of the cultural and socioeconomic factors examined.
For the beginning pattern of family formation therefore, only education
provides sufficient differentiation between women to affect the ages when
they marry and have their first child. About 25 per cent of women have a
premarital birth or conception. This estimate may however be affected by
the accuracy with which dates of first marriage and first births are reported,
as well as a clear understanding of when a marriage took place. This is
because in Ghana, the contracting of marriage is a process, lasting over
several months, and the exact beginning of the union can not always be
stated with precision. Variations in the proportion of women with premarital births or conceptions are observed between both socioeconomic
and cultural groups. The high level of premarital births and conceptions
has to do with the absence of any strict notion of illegitimacy, the
permissiveness of premarital sex among many ethnic groups in Ghana,
and the restrictive use of contraception.
The quantum and tempo of fertility vary mainly according to education
and ethnicity, however, the occurrence of a short birth interval of less
than 2 years is significantly related to the survival status of the preceding
child. Women who lose a child between birth and three months of age
have greater odds than other categories of women of having a short birth
interval. The median interval between births is 30-36 months. Fewer
proportions of women with secondary or higher education proceed to
higher-order births, but their speed or tempo of reproduction is not
significantly different from that of women at lower levels of education.
On the other hand, between ethnic groups, the most important
observation is the variations in the length of the birth interval. There are
no significant variations in birth functions between women belonging to
different ethnic groups. Just like the age at first marriage and first birth,
both the quantum and tempo of fertility appear to have been
approximately constant over the years. Slight declines observed in the
five years before the survey appear to have been due to misplacement of
births and to the out-migration of Ghanaian young men to Nigeria during
the latter's oil boom in the 1970s. The general conclusion is that Ghana
probably still exhibits natural fertility.
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