Marital Status, Unmet Need for Contraception and Health Insurance Subscription among Women in Ghana

Abstract

Anthony Edward Boakye

Background Uninsured women often have inadequate access to care, get a lower standard of care when they are in the health system, and have poorer health outcomes.

Objective In line with this, the study aimed to investigate how marital status and unmet need for contraception interplay to influence women’s health insurance subscription in Ghana.

Methods Data for the study were extracted from the 2022 GDHS data from online at https://dhsprogram.com/data. The data were processed with SPSS version 27 and analyzed with frequency distribution, Pearson’s chi-square test of independence and binary logistic regression. The frequency distribution was used to summarize participants’ responses into proportions, the Pearson’s chi-squared test of independence was used to test the hypotheses postulated in the study to either accept or reject the null hypotheses. However, the binary logistic regression was used to assess the effects of marital status and unmet need for contraception on women’s health insurance subscription in Ghana.

Results The study found that married women had higher likelihood of health insurance subscription while women who experienced unmet need for limiting, and those who were not married and decided to abstain from sex in the last 30 days prior to the study tend to have lower odds of health insurance subscription.

Conclusion These findings reveal important disparities in women’s access to healthcare coverage in Ghana. Therefore, the study recommends that Ghana health service should endeavor to use community health workers or mobile health platforms to connect underserved women to health insurance enrollment and contraceptive services.

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