Impact of kinship support on child mortality in the Upper East Region of Ghana: assessing the Grandmother Hypothesis

Background: The grandmother is an important kin member whose contribution to childcare and survival has been recognized in the literature, hence the Grandmother Hypothesis. This article examines the effect of the presence of a grandmother on child mortality.

Methods: Data were obtained from the Navrongo Health and Demographic Surveillance System, located in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Children born between January 1999 and December 2018 were included in the analysis. Person-months lived for each child were generated. The multilevel Poisson regression technique was employed to investigate the effect of a grandmother on child survival.

Results: In all, 57 116 children were included in the analysis, of which 7% died before age 5 y. Person-months were generated for the children, which produced 2.7 million records, with about 487 800 person-years. After controlling for confounders, results showed that children in households with paternal grandmothers are 11% less likely to die compared with those without paternal grandmothers. However, when other confounders were taken into accounts, the beneficial effect of maternal grandmothers disappeared.

Conclusions: We conclude that the presence of grandmothers improves child survival, thus sustaining the Grandmother Hypothesis. The experiences of these grandmothers should be tapped to improve child survival, particularly in rural areas.