IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0223296.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Geospatial correlates of early marriage and union formation in Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Fiifi Amoako Johnson
  • Mumuni Abu
  • Chigozie Edson Utazi

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Fiifi Amoako Johnson & Mumuni Abu & Chigozie Edson Utazi, 2019. "Geospatial correlates of early marriage and union formation in Ghana," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-17, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0223296
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223296
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223296
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223296&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0223296?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Regina Gemignani & Quentin Wodon, 2015. "Child Marriage and Faith Affiliation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Stylized Facts and Heterogeneity," The Review of Faith & International Affairs, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 41-47, September.
    2. Umlauf, Nikolaus & Adler, Daniel & Kneib, Thomas & Lang, Stefan & Zeileis, Achim, 2015. "Structured Additive Regression Models: An R Interface to BayesX," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 63(i21).
    3. David Wheeler & Michael Tiefelsdorf, 2005. "Multicollinearity and correlation among local regression coefficients in geographically weighted regression," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 161-187, June.
    4. Jennifer Parsons & Jeffrey Edmeades & Aslihan Kes & Suzanne Petroni & Maggie Sexton & Quentin Wodon, 2015. "Economic Impacts of Child Marriage: A Review of the Literature," The Review of Faith & International Affairs, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 12-22, September.
    5. Shahnaz Abdullah* & Halima Qureshi & Shakil Quayes, 2015. "The adverse effect of child marriage on women’s economic well being in Bangladesh – can microfinance help?," Journal of Developing Areas, Tennessee State University, College of Business, vol. 49(4), pages 109-125, October-D.
    6. Austin, Mike, 2007. "Species distribution models and ecological theory: A critical assessment and some possible new approaches," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 200(1), pages 1-19.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Seth R. Gitter & Onyedikachukwu Onyemeziem & William Corcoran, 2023. "Menarche, Marriage Age, Education, and Employment in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia," Working Papers 2023-04, Towson University, Department of Economics, revised Sep 2023.
    2. Fiifi Amoako Johnson, 2022. "Spatiotemporal clustering and correlates of childhood stunting in Ghana: Analysis of the fixed and nonlinear associative effects of socio-demographic and socio-ecological factors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(2), pages 1-22, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rabin Chakrabortty & Subodh Chandra Pal & Mehebub Sahana & Ayan Mondal & Jie Dou & Binh Thai Pham & Ali P. Yunus, 2020. "Soil erosion potential hotspot zone identification using machine learning and statistical approaches in eastern India," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 104(2), pages 1259-1294, November.
    2. Jacopo Canello & Francesco Vidoli, 2020. "Investigating space‐time patterns of regional industrial resilience through a micro‐level approach: An application to the Italian wine industry," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(4), pages 653-676, September.
    3. Tameshnie Deane, 2021. "Marrying Young: Limiting the Impact of a Crisis on the High Prevalence of Child Marriages in Niger," Laws, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-21, July.
    4. Chih-Hao Wang & Na Chen, 2021. "A multi-objective optimization approach to balancing economic efficiency and equity in accessibility to multi-use paths," Transportation, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 1967-1986, August.
    5. Tsimpanos, Apostolos & Tsimbos, Cleon & Kalogirou, Stamatis, 2018. "Assessing spatial variation and heterogeneity of fertility in Greece at local authority level," MPRA Paper 100406, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Bussolo,Maurizio & Ezebuihe,Jessy Amarachi & Munoz Boudet,Ana Maria & Poupakis,Stavros & Rahman,Tasmia & Sarma,Nayantara, 2022. "Social Norms and Gender Equality : A Descriptive Analysis for South Asia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10142, The World Bank.
    7. Václavík, Tomáš & Meentemeyer, Ross K., 2009. "Invasive species distribution modeling (iSDM): Are absence data and dispersal constraints needed to predict actual distributions?," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 220(23), pages 3248-3258.
    8. Brown, Paul T. & Joshi, Chaitanya & Joe, Stephen & Rue, Håvard, 2021. "A novel method of marginalisation using low discrepancy sequences for integrated nested Laplace approximations," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    9. Diana Gutiérrez Posada & Fernando Rubiera Morollón & Ana Viñuela, 2018. "Ageing Places in an Ageing Country: The Local Dynamics of the Elderly Population in Spain," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 109(3), pages 332-349, July.
    10. Marco Helbich & Wolfgang Brunauer & Eric Vaz & Peter Nijkamp, 2014. "Spatial Heterogeneity in Hedonic House Price Models: The Case of Austria," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(2), pages 390-411, February.
    11. Daniel Acheampong & Tanya Benford, 2020. "Alternative Treatment Of Contribution In Aid Of Construction: The Impact On Investor-Owned Utility Plant Asset Replacement," Accounting & Taxation, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 12(1), pages 81-96.
    12. Muñoz-Mas, Rafael & Vezza, Paolo & Alcaraz-Hernández, Juan Diego & Martínez-Capel, Francisco, 2016. "Risk of invasion predicted with support vector machines: A case study on northern pike (Esox Lucius, L.) and bleak (Alburnus alburnus, L.)," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 342(C), pages 123-134.
    13. Bernhard Baumgartner & Daniel Guhl & Thomas Kneib & Winfried J. Steiner, 2018. "Flexible estimation of time-varying effects for frequently purchased retail goods: a modeling approach based on household panel data," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 40(4), pages 837-873, October.
    14. Yu, Haitao & Peng, Zhong-Ren, 2019. "Exploring the spatial variation of ridesourcing demand and its relationship to built environment and socioeconomic factors with the geographically weighted Poisson regression," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 147-163.
    15. Simon N. Wood & Natalya Pya & Benjamin Säfken, 2016. "Smoothing Parameter and Model Selection for General Smooth Models," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 111(516), pages 1548-1563, October.
    16. Kristoffer B. Birkeland & Allan D. D'Silva & Roland Füss & Are Oust, 2021. "The Predictability of House Prices: "Human Against Machine"," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 24(2), pages 139-183.
    17. Meineri, Eric & Dahlberg, C. Johan & Hylander, Kristoffer, 2015. "Using Gaussian Bayesian Networks to disentangle direct and indirect associations between landscape physiography, environmental variables and species distribution," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 313(C), pages 127-136.
    18. Marmion, Mathieu & Luoto, Miska & Heikkinen, Risto K. & Thuiller, Wilfried, 2009. "The performance of state-of-the-art modelling techniques depends on geographical distribution of species," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 220(24), pages 3512-3520.
    19. Hoehun Ha & Wei Tu, 2018. "An Ecological Study on the Spatially Varying Relationship between County-Level Suicide Rates and Altitude in the United States," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-16, April.
    20. Kaiping Wang & Weiqi Wang & Niyi Zha & Yue Feng & Chenlan Qiu & Yunlu Zhang & Jia Ma & Rui Zhang, 2022. "Spatially Heterogeneity Response of Critical Ecosystem Service Capacity to Address Regional Development Risks to Rapid Urbanization: The Case of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-21, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0223296. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.