Prevalence And Trends In Child Marriage In Ghana

Abstract

While the issue of child marriage has received a lot of attention among both academia and the media in the last couple of years, much of the discussions often lack empirical statistical evidence. In order to strengthen effectiveness of policies based on these discussions, some scholars have used various econometric approaches to explain the incidence and depth of child marriage in some countries. This paper follows these analytical approaches to discuss incidence, trend and depth of child marriage among girls in the various geographical areas and among various groups in Ghana. The paper employed the data set of the sixth round of the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS VI). The survey was conducted in 2014 and covered 11,835 households in the ten administrative regions of the country. The data set of GDHS VI was considered appropriate for the paper because it contains information on the age at the time of first marriage or when the person started living with a partner. The incidence of child marriage was estimated as the proportion of women and girls in a particular age group who got married before they were 18 years while the concept of depth of child marriage was borrowed from the poverty literature to capture how early young women in Ghana marry. The results of the stochastic dominance tests indicate that irrespective of the threshold for the age of marriage, women in urban areas and women who are Christians are less likely to marry at an early age. It was also found that the incidence of child marriage is relatively higher in the Northern Region, Upper East Region and Upper West Regions compared to the other regions. Again, the incidence of child marriage was found to be highest among Gurma and Mole-Dagbani ethnic groups. Additionally, the paper identified a declining trend in the incidence of child marriage and suggested the development could be due to modernization and the desire of the women to attain higher academic laurels. It is recommended that Government and development partners should intensify campaigns against child marriage in the areas where its prevalence is high and among the groups with higher incidence in the country.