Child marriage and associated outcomes in northern Ghana: a cross-sectional study
Abstract
BackgroundChild marriage is a human rights violation disproportionately affecting girls in lower- and middle-income countries and has serious public health implications. In Ghana, one in five girls marry before their 18th birthday and one in 20 girls is married before her 15th birthday. This paper uses a unique dataset from Northern Ghana to examine the association between child marriage and adverse outcomes for women among a uniquely vulnerable population.MethodsBaseline data from on ongoing impact evaluation of a government-run cash transfer programme was used. The sample consisted of 1349 ever-married women aged 20–29 years from 2497 households in the Northern and Upper East regions of Ghana. We estimated a series of ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistic regression models to examine associations of child marriage with health, fertility, contraception, child mortality, social support, stress and agency outcomes among women, controlling for individual characteristics and household-level factors.ResultsChild marriage in this sample was associated with increased odds of poorer health, as measured by difficulties in daily activities (OR = 2.08; CI 1.28–3.38 among women 20–24 years and OR = 1.58; CI 1.19–2.12 among women 20–29 years), increased odds of child mortality among first-born children (OR = 2.03; CI 1.09–3.77 among women 20–24 years) and lower odds of believing that one’s life is determined by their own actions (OR = 0.42; CI 0.25–0.72 among women 20–24 years and…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a cross-sectional, done in people. Its evidence level is 4 of 5 (Low · observational). Observational designs can show an association but not prove cause. Reported size: 77 participants or records.
Read the paper
Related studies
- A Coupled SYSTEM of Intracellular Ca 2+ Clocks and Surface Membrane Voltage Clocks Controls the Timekeeping Mechanism of the Heart’s Pacemaker
- A Comprehensive Review on the Therapeutic Potential of Curcuma longa Linn. in Relation to its Major Active Constituent Curcumin
- Cancer epigenetics: Moving forward
- Current developments in LC-MS for pharmaceutical analysis
- Myricetin: A comprehensive review on its biological potentials
- A Computational Systems Biology Software Platform for Multiscale Modeling and Simulation: Integrating Whole-Body Physiology, Disease Biology, and Molecular Reaction Networks
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.