Factors affecting Age at First Birth of Women aged 15- 43 in Ghana
Using data from Ghana Demographic and Health Survey 2014
By Ama Owusu-Darko
The data used for this analysis came from the Women’s Individual Survey of the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey 2014 and was downloaded from the Demographic and Health Survey website www.dhsprogram.com.
Table 1: A table showing the distribution of the selected variables
| birth before 19 (N=2852) |
birth after 19 (N=3045) |
Overall (N=5897) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| age | |||
| Mean (SD) | 33.8 (8.55) | 35.2 (7.35) | 34.6 (7.99) |
| Median [Min, Max] | 34.0 [15.0, 49.0] | 35.0 [20.0, 49.0] | 35.0 [15.0, 49.0] |
| early_mar | |||
| married before 19 | 2468 (86.5%) | 945 (31.0%) | 3413 (57.9%) |
| married after 19 | 384 (13.5%) | 2100 (69.0%) | 2484 (42.1%) |
| urban | |||
| urban | 1052 (36.9%) | 1622 (53.3%) | 2674 (45.3%) |
| rural | 1800 (63.1%) | 1423 (46.7%) | 3223 (54.7%) |
| lit2 | |||
| cannot read at all | 2148 (75.3%) | 1710 (56.2%) | 3858 (65.4%) |
| able to read only part of sentence | 217 (7.6%) | 251 (8.2%) | 468 (7.9%) |
| able to read whole sentence | 483 (16.9%) | 1077 (35.4%) | 1560 (26.5%) |
| no card with required language | 3 (0.1%) | 5 (0.2%) | 8 (0.1%) |
| blind or visually impaired | 1 (0.0%) | 2 (0.1%) | 3 (0.1%) |
| educlvl | |||
| no education | 1135 (39.8%) | 926 (30.4%) | 2061 (34.9%) |
| primary | 695 (24.4%) | 472 (15.5%) | 1167 (19.8%) |
| secondary | 1002 (35.1%) | 1449 (47.6%) | 2451 (41.6%) |
| higher | 20 (0.7%) | 198 (6.5%) | 218 (3.7%) |
| total years education | |||
| Mean (SD) | 4.28 (4.22) | 6.39 (5.30) | 5.37 (4.92) |
| Median [Min, Max] | 4.00 [0, 18.0] | 8.00 [0, 18.0] | 6.00 [0, 18.0] |
From Figures 1-3 below, the histograms show the following trend. As compared to urban women, rural women are more likely to have their first child before the age of 23. (indicated by the blue bar)
The inflection point is age 23, where the trend shows urban women having higher percentages of first births at the ages 23 to 43.
Null Hypothesis=There is no association between the likelihood that a woman had her first child before the age of 19 and whether she is currently living in an urban or rural area
Alternate Hypothesis=There is an association between the likelihood that a woman had her first child before the age of 19 and whether she is currently living in an urban or rural area
## # A tibble: 2 x 4
## urban `birth before 19` `birth after 19` Total
## <fct> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 urban 1052 1622 2674
## 2 rural 1800 1423 3223##
## Pearson's Chi-squared test with Yates' continuity correction
##
## data: location_first_birth
## X-squared = 158.8, df = 1, p-value < 2.2e-16Since the p-value is less than 0.05, we reject the null hypothesis thus indicating that there is an association between whether a woman currently lives in an urban or rural area and the likelihood that she gave birth to her first child before age 19.