Geospatial correlates of early marriage and union formation in Ghana

Abstract

The practice of early marriage, although acknowledged as a human rights violation, continues to occur in many countries. Different studies have identified the associated factors in many developing countries. However, these factors often assume no geographical variation in these factors within countries. Again, cultural practices and beliefs which strongly influence the acceptance and practices of early marriage vary geographically. In addition, geographic clusters of high rates of early marriage and union formation are also unknown. Thus, area specific correlates of early child marriage are required for the development of location specific policies to aid the eradication of early child marriage. Using data from the 2010 Ghana Population and Housing Census, this study examines the extent of geospatial clustering in early marriage amongst girls and their spatially-varying associated factors at the district level. The findings reveal strong clustering of high early marriage amongst districts in the Upper West, Northern and Volta regions. Nationally, 6.96% (CI = 6.83, 7.08) of girls are married or in union before their 18th birthday. The estimates range from 2.7% in the Jaman North district in Brong Ahafo region to 19.0% in the Gushiegu district in Northern region. Economic factors were observed as important spatially-varying associated factors. The findings suggest that targeted interventions are required in the effort to eradicate the practice in Ghana.

Spatial distribution and multilevel analysis of factors associated with child marriage in Nigeria

“…The hotspot analysis showed that child marriage was high in areas like Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina, Kano, Jigawa, Yobe, Bauchi, Niger, Borno, Gombe and Adamawa. This finding collaborates with previous studies conducted in Ethiopia 20 and Ghana 23 that showed regional variations in early marriage. One plausible reason could be that the above-mentioned areas exhibit deep-rooted traditions, such as creating a bond with the bridegroom's family, considering marriage as a success for the girl and her family and ensuring the virginity of the girl before marriage 21 ; another important reason for the large variation in child marriage in Nigeria could be that the policies enacted at national level were often ignored at state level.…”

Geographical hotspots and correlates of early sexual debut among women in Ghana

“…The model is thus specified as where are the non-linear smoothing function of the continuous variables , and accounts for unobserved spatial heterogeneity at district j ( j = 1, …, S), of which some may be spatially structured (correlated) and others unstructured (uncorrelated). The spatially structured effects show the effect of location by assuming that geographically close areas are more similar than distant areas, whilst the unstructured spatial effect accounts for spatial randomness in the model [ 32 ]. Equation 5 , in this regard, is specified as.…”

“… where is the structured spatial effects, and is the unstructured spatial effects and . The spatially structured effects depict the extent of clustering of early sexual intercourse at the district level and the associative effects of unaccounted covariates, which may be spatially clustered or random [ 32 ]. The smooth effects of continuous factors are modelled with P-spline priors, whilst the spatial effects are modelled using Markov random field priors.…”

Spatiotemporal clustering and correlates of childhood stunting in Ghana: Analysis of the fixed and nonlinear associative effects of socio-demographic and socio-ecological factors

“…Potential multicollinearity amongst the continuous covariates was investigated using the Pearson correlation coefficient. Correlations amongst the other variables were examined using the Interval-by-Interval Pearson’s R, Ordinal-by-Ordinal Spearman Correlation, and Nominal by Interval Eta [ 27 ]. The correlations were not high enough for potential multicollinearity.…”