The sociodemographic correlates of birth intervals in Ghana
Creators: name: Dugbaza, Tetteh
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 1994
Subjects: subject: Birth intervals Ghana
subject: Fertility, Human Ghana

description: 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.