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Religion, Contraception, and Method Choice of Married Women in Ghana

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Abstract

Using pooled data from the 1998 and 2003 Demographic and Health Surveys, this paper investigates the association between religion and contraceptive behavior of married women in Ghana. Guided by the particularized theology and characteristics hypotheses, multinomial logit and complementary log–log models are used to explore denominational differences in contraceptive adoption among currently married women and assess whether the differences could be explained through other characteristics. We found that while there were no differences between women of different Christian faiths, non-Christian women (Muslim and Traditional) were significantly more likely to have never used contraception compared with Christian women. Similar observations were made on current use of contraception, although the differences were greatly reduced in the multivariate models.

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Notes

  1. Fertility stall has been defined as a failure of the national TFR to decline between two most recent DHS surveys after an established trend of decline (Bongaarts 2006).

  2. Though the data do not specify the traditional methods, the 2008 GDHS final report mentions periodic abstinence as the most popular traditional method used by married women in Ghana.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research of Canada (SSHRC) Standard Research Grant #410-2009-0209 entitled “Religion, religiosity, and reproductive behavior in sub-Saharan Africa.”

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Correspondence to Stephen Obeng Gyimah.

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Gyimah, S.O., Adjei, J.K. & Takyi, B.K. Religion, Contraception, and Method Choice of Married Women in Ghana. J Relig Health 51, 1359–1374 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-011-9478-4

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