Estimating fertility and childhood mortality for the western region of Ghana from pregnancy history data

Abstract

This study basically aims at estimating fertility and childhood mortality rates for a rural community in the Western Region of Ghana using the pregnancy history method. The method was found to have a few advantages over other indirect methods used for estimating fertility and childhood mortality. However, pregnancy history data suffer from under-reporting, event misplacement and age mis-statement errors; and these off-set some of the advantages of the method. The observed rates from the study area gave an implausible impression of a rise and fall in fertility and childhood mortality in the last 15 years preceding the survey. This feature is believed to be associated with event misplacement errors. The reported data was smoothed using the moving average procedure. Age-specific fertility rates among younger women were found to be declining in the last 10 years preceding the survey; and this was believed to be related to the impact of formal education. Fertility in the area was high and constant over the the last 15 years prior to the survey. Total fertility rate for the last 5 years was estimated to be about 6.1 per female. Childhood mortality was under-reported by about 20 per cent. And the infant mortality rates obtained were considered to be implausible as a result of event misplacement and under-reporting errors. In general, both the infant and childhood mortality [q(5)] rates are high but declining. However, the rate of decling could not be categorically stated as a result of errors in the data. Show more