Author
Listed:
- Josephine Akua Ackah Baafi
(London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
- Rebecca Sear
(Brunel University London)
- Sarah Walters
(London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
- Estelle McLean
(London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
- Kofi Awusabo-Asare
(University of Cape Coast)
- Anushé Hassan
(London School of Economics and Political Science)
- Fabian Sebastian Achana
(Navrongo Health Research Centre (NHRC))
Abstract
Background: The nuclear convergence hypothesis proposes that development and urbanisation lead to increasing proportions of nuclear families. We explore this hypothesis in Ghana by charting household living arrangements as captured in censuses and surveys. Objective: To classify household structure in Ghana and track trends to test whether households converge towards nucleation during processes of development and urbanisation. Methods: We employ two methods of classification – manual and data-driven (latent class analysis) – to create household structures using Ghana’s censuses (1984–2021) and Demographic and Health Surveys (1993–2022). We explore trends over time and compare urban and rural areas to track nuclear convergence while documenting the differences and similarities between data sources and methods of classification. Results: We find that though the manual and data-driven approaches produce similar results, the latter is vulnerable to possible misclassification. From the manual approach, we identify seven different typologies of household structure in Ghana and find that, on average, a substantial proportion are core nuclear (couple with children only), other extended (non-multigenerational), and single-member households. Overall, we find weak evidence for nuclear convergence. There has not been a significant shift in the average distribution of household types in Ghana, and in urban areas there is a growing proportion of multigenerational extended households, with region-based peculiarities. We also observe that the surveys provide more reliable evidence on trends than the censuses do. Contribution: There is no strong evidence to support nuclear convergence in Ghana. We make a methodological contribution, highlighting that the use of data-driven methods for household classification needs to be approached with caution.
Suggested Citation
Josephine Akua Ackah Baafi & Rebecca Sear & Sarah Walters & Estelle McLean & Kofi Awusabo-Asare & Anushé Hassan & Fabian Sebastian Achana, 2025.
"Household structure in Ghana: Exploring dynamics over three decades,"
Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 52(30), pages 971-1022.
Handle:
RePEc:dem:demres:v:52:y:2025:i:30
DOI: 10.4054/DemRes.2025.52.30
Download full text from publisher
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:dem:demres:v:52:y:2025:i:30. 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.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Editorial Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.demogr.mpg.de/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.