Age at marriage and fertility in Ghana (West Africa).

This paper examines the net effect of age at 1st marriage on the fertility of a sample of rural Ghanaian women. The analysis is based on the data obtained from the DANFA Comprehensive Rural Health and Family Planning Project Ghana (West Africa) and is guided by the analytical framework of Davis-Blake (1956). The sample consists of 857 married women between the ages of 15 and 44. The statistical technique used is stepwise multiple regression. The dependent variable is fertility measured by the number of children ever born alive to the woman. Independent variables include age of wife age at 1st marriage number of fetal deaths number of previous marriages number of current wives of husband and family planning methods ever used. The relevant literature on the subject has been reviewed and indicates that the results of various studies are inconsistent and not many studies have used multivariate statistical techniques to isolate the effect of age at 1st marriage on fertility while controlling for other influential variables. The results of this analysis clearly indicate that there is a statistically significant negative relationship between female age at 1st marriage and fertility. The inverse relationship between age at 1st marriage and fertility performance of the wives has been found to be most pronounced for the total sample as well as for different age groups.