Introduction

The in-depth knowledge of demographic characteristics of a population gives development planners, policy and decision makers, an insight as to how development policies and strategies can be formulated and implemented effectively to facilitate the socio-economic development of the people. The current decentralized governance system and administration of planning in Ghana require that statistics be provided on all aspects of the population for policy planning d implementation. This chapter provides information and analysis of the population in the Tema Metropolis with respect to size and distribution, age-sex structure, migration, fertility and mortality.

 Population Size and Distribution The most fundamental demographic parameter is the number of individuals within a population (Lebreton et al., 1992). The 2010 PHC indicate the total population of the Tema Metropolitan as 292,773 with 47.8 percent been males and 52.2 percent females. The metropolis is entirely urban. Tables 2.1 show the age-sex distribution of population in Tema metropolis. The age group 25-29 years has the highest population among the population (11.4%), followed by the 20-24 years age group (11.1%), 15-19 years age group (9.6%) and 10.14 years age group (9.3%).

The least proportions are the 90-94 years and 95-99 years age groups (0.1% each). The proportion of children (0-14 years of age) in the population of the metropolis is 29.4 percent, adults (15-64 years age group) are 66.7 percent and the elderly (65+ years and older) is 3.9 percent. Among the female population, the proportion of children (28.7%) is lower than the proportion among males (30.1%) but the proportions of adults and the elderly among the female population (67.2% and 4.1%, respectively) are higher than the proportions among the male population (66.1% and 3.8%, respectively). Generally, there are more females (52.2%) than males (47.8%) in the population of the metropolis. The sex ratio is 92, that is, for every 100 females in the Metropolis, there are 92 males.

Age dependency ratio

Table 2.2 also shows that the total age dependency ratio for Tema Metropolis for is 50 and it is 51.3 for males and 48.7 for females. Thus, for every 100 people in the economically active group (15-64 years of age) there are 50 persons who are dependent on them. The 0-14 years age group is the children population, 15-64 years of age group is the working population and 65+ years is the aged population. Table 2.2 shows that 66.7 percent of the total population are in the working population, 10.6 percent are children and 3.9 percent are aged. Females dominate the working population with 52.6 percent while males constitute 47.4 percent. Regarding the aged population, females dominate with 53.8 percent endorsing the fact that females have long life span as compared to males (46.2%).

Age-Sex Structure

Figure 2.1 displays a population pyramid of age and sex distribution of the population in the metropolis in 2010. The Tema Metropolis has a youthful population with the age cohorts 0-4 years, 20-24 years and 25-29 years having the highest proportions among the male and female populations. The age-sex structure has a broad base, indicating a concentration of population with younger years of age. The protruding part of the pyramid for the age group 20-29 can be attributable to the fact that, the metropolis is a business district and therefore attracts lot more young people who come in search of jobs.

Fertility Mortality and Migration

The section examines the fertility, mortality and migration of the population in the Tema Metropolis. It involved analysis of the various levels of changes of these components of the population for its important for socioeconomic planning and policy adoption in the Tema Metropolis.

 Fertility

Fertility deals with human childbearing or reproduction (E. O. Aboagye, 2010). Table 2.3 shows Total Fertility Rate, General Fertility Rate and Crude Birth Rate in the Greater Accra region by district. Tema metropolis has a Total Fertility Rate of 2.3, the third lowest after La Dade Kotopon municipal (2.0) and Accra metropolis (2.2). The district with the highest TotalFertility Rate is Ga South municipal (3.9), followed by Shai Osudoku (3.0) and Ga West Municipal (2.9).

The General Fertility Rate of Tema metropolis is 68.3, also the third lowest in the region, after La Date Kotopon (6.0) and Accra metropolis (63.7). The district with the highest General Fertility Rate is Ada West (115.3), followed by Ga South municipal (111.4) and Ga Central municipal (104.3)

The Crude Birth Rate for Tema metropolis is 21.0, again the third highest after La Dade Kotopon municipal (18.9) and Accra metropolis (19.7). The district with the highest crude birth rate is Ga South municipal (31.8) followed by Ada West district (27.8) and Ga Central municipal (27.2).

Children ever born, children surviving and sex

Table 2.4 shows female population 12 years and older by age, children ever born, children surviving and sex in the Tema metropolis. Out of the total number (191,790) of children ever born in the metropolis of the female population 12 years and older, 50.1 percent are males and 49.9 percent are females. For surviving children, 49.2 percent are males and 50.8 percent are females. About 89.3 percent of children ever born in the metropolis survived. Among the male children ever born, 87.7 percent survived while among female children ever born, 90.8 percent survived. Thus, female children have better survival rate than male children ever born in the Tema metropolis.

The 35-39 years age group has the highest children ever born (23,711), followed by 40-44 years age group (22,992) and 30-34 years age group (22,381). The 12-14 years age group has the lowest number (41), followed by 15-19 years age group (920) and 20-24 years age group (6,224).

Mortality

Mortality or death rate measures the frequency or the number of deaths to the total population. A number of mortality measures are derived from the 2010 PHC data. Table 2.5 shows total deaths in households and crude death rate by district in the Greater Accra region. The Tema metropolis recorded 7.3 percent (292,773) of the total deaths in the regional population of (4,010,054). However, Tema metropolis recorded a 7.5 percent in terms of the total number of deaths in the metropolis and crude death rate of 4.4 per 1000 deaths. This is above the regional rate of 4.3 per 1,000 deaths. The Ada East district has the highest crude death rate of 10.4 per 1000 whiles Ga Central Municipality has the lowest of 3.1 per 1,000 deaths.

Age specific mortality rate

Figure 2.2 shows that death rates among females are higher than that of males from the age group 25-29 years to 40-44 years, an indication of relatively high maternal mortality in the metropolis. However, the age-specific death rates for female are relatively lower than that of males for other age groups. At older ages, mortality rates for men increases very fast compares with their female counterparts. The estimated mortality pattern exhibited in Figure 2.2 is similar to patterns observed in other districts in the region.

Causes of death

Table 2.6 shows the causes of deaths in households. From the table, there are 1,300 household deaths in the district compare with the regional household deaths of 17,363. Out of the total deaths in the district, 13.8 percent is caused by accident/violence/ homicide/suicide whiles 86.2 percent are due to other causes.

Social Characteristics

Introduction

This chapter presents the social characteristics of the population in the Tema Metropolis to facilitate understanding of welfare and way of life. The chapter covers household composition and headship, marital status, nationality, religious affiliation, literacy and educational status of the population.

 Size, Household Composition and Headship

 Household size

Table 3.1 provides information on household size by locality in the Tema Metropolis. The Metropolis has a household population of 285,139 with a total number of 70,797 households. The average household size from the 2010 PHC data in the Metropolis is 4.1 persons per household. The average household per house is 1.7 that is approximately 2 households live in a house.

Household composition and headship

The composition of households is presented in Table 3.2. About 34.1 percent of the household population are children, 24.8 percent are heads of household, 11.2 percent are other relatives, 10.6 percent are spouses and 7.0 percent are grandchildren.

Among the male household population, the proportions of children (35.0%), heads (33.0%) and brothers (5.7%) are higher than the proportions among female household population (33.2%, 17.4% and 4.9%, respectively). And, among female household population, the proportions of spouses (17.8%), other relatives (12.0%) and parent/parent in-law (1.6%) are higher than the proportions among the male household population (2.7%, 10.4% and 0.5%, respectively).

Household structure

Table 3.3 shows that 22.4 percent of households in the metropolis are nuclear family (head spouse(s) children), 19.4 percent are extended family households (head, spouse/s, children and head’s relatives), 16.9 percent are single parent extended households and 14.5 percent are head and other composition but no spouse.

Among the male-headed households, higher proportions are nuclear (23.6%), head and other composition but no spouse (14.5%) and head only (6.0%) than the proportions among female-headed households (21.3%, 13.3% and 2.6%, respectively). And, among female-headed households, higher proportions are single parent extended (19.5%) and single parent nuclear (9.3%) than the proportions among male-headed households (14.1% and 7.3%, respectively).

Marital Status

There are many forms of marital status of population 12 years and older in the Metropolis as indicated in Figure 3.1. Those who have never married are 47.8 percent, the proportion of the married is 37.8 percent, those living together /informal / consensual union are 5.4 percent. The rest are widows (3.9%), divorced (3.0%) and separated (2.2%). all together is less than one-tenth of the population.

Marital status, age and sex

Table 3.4 shows marital status of population 12 years and older by sex and age-group in the metropolis. The proportion of the never married population decreases steadily from 92.8 percent among the 12-14 years age group to 3.2 percent among the 60-64 years age group and increase to 5.8 percent among the 65+ years age group.

Among the married population, the proportion increases steadily from 5.0 percent among the 15-19 years age group to 70.0 percent among the 50-54 years age group and decreases to 49.5 percent among the 65+ years age group. The proportion of the separated population by age group also shows steady trends. The proportion increases from 0.2 percent among the 15-19years age-group to 5.0 percent among the 50-54 years age group and decreases to 3.3 percent among the 65+ years age group.

Among the population in informal/consensual union/living together, the proportion increases from 0.9 percent among the 12-14 years age group to 9.2 percent among the 25-29 years age group and declines to 2.3 percent among the 2.3 percent among the 60-64 years age group and increase to 2.5 percent among the 65+ years age group.

Among the divorced population, the proportion increases steadily from 0.2 percent among the 15-19 years age group to 8.9 percent among the 60-64 years age group and declines to 6.2 percent among the 65+ years age group. Among the widowed population, the proportion increases steadily from o.1 percent among the 15-19 years age group to 32.7 percent among the 65+ years age group.

Among the never married population by age group, the trends in magnitude of the proportions are similar among the males and females, howbeit different proportions. Among the married male population, the proportion increases from 4.7 percent among the 15-19 years age group to 80.6 percent among the 55-59 years age group and declines to 71.1 percent among the 65+ years age group. Among the females, the proportions increases to 65.9 percent among the 40-44 years age group and declines to 31.1 percent among the 65+ years age group.

Marital status and education

Table 3.5 shows Level of education of marital status of relevant population in Tema metropolis by sex. Approximately, 61.1 percent of persons in consensual union have basic school as highest educational level, and 25.8 percent of never married persons have secondary school as their highest

Among the married population, 10.6 percent have no education, 45.2 percent have basic education, 14.6 percent have secondary education and the remaining 29.6 percent have higher levels of education. Among the never married population, 4.2 percent have no education, 49.5 percent have basic education, 25.8 percent have secondary education and the remaining 20.5 percent have higher levels of education.

The proportion among the widowed who have no education is very high (33.6%), followed by those separated (17.4%), divorced (17.1%) and those in informal/consensual union/living together (14.1%). Among the widowed population, the proportion with basic education is the lowest (42.5%), followed by the divorced (53.2%), those separated (54.3%) and those in informal/consensual union/living together (61.1%). The separated and the divorced have relatively higher levels of education among them than among the widowed and those in informal/consensual union/living together.

Among the married female population, higher proportions have no education (14.4%) and basic education (47.8%) compared to their male counterparts (6.5% and 42.4%, respectively).Generally, the married males have higher levels of education than the married females.

Among the never married females, higher proportions have no education (5.3%) and basic education (51.6%) than their male counterparts (3.1% and 47.5%, respectively). Generally again, the never married males have higher levels of education than their female counterparts.

 Marital status and economic activity

Table 3.6 shows marital status and economic activities by sex in Tema metropolis. About 78.7 percent of the married population are employed and 16.9 percent are economically not active compared to 43.6 percent and 48.2 percent, respectively. Among the never married population, about 80.6 percent of persons in informal/consensual union/living together are employed compared to those separated (76.8%), divorced (75.0%) and the widowed (50.4%).

Among the married male population, higher proportion is employed (81.0%) compared with 76.6 percent of their female counterparts. And, a lower proportion of the married males are economically not active (15.2%) than the proportion among married females (18.3%).

Among the never married males, a higher proportion (45.3%) are employed compared to their female counterparts (41.8%); and, 45.8 percent among the never married males are economically not active compared with 50.7 percent of their female counterparts.

Migration

About 56.9 percent of the population in the metropolis is migrants (166,506). Table 2.7 shows that 20.5 percent of the migrant population are born elsewhere in the Greater Accra region, three-quarters (75.3%) are born elsewhere in another region and the remaining 4.2 percent are born outside Ghana.

Among migrants born elsewhere in another region, the highest proportion are from Eastern region (23.1%), followed by Volta Region (22.6%) and Central Region (22.4%). The lowest proportion are from Upper West Region (0.8%), followed by Upper East Region (2.1%) and Brong-Ahafo Region (3.3%).

About 40.2 percent of the migrants have stayed in the metropolis for less than 5 years, 20.1 percent have stayed for 10-19 years and 22.3 percent have stayed for 20+ years. Among the migrants from Central region, 28.3 percent have stayed for 20+ years, those from Western region, 28.0 percent have stayed for 20+ years and those from Eastern region, 26.2 percent have stayed for 20+ years. Migrants who have stayed for less than 1 year, 17.4 percent are among those from Upper East Region, 17.0 percent each among those from Northern and Upper West Regions, and 15.0 percent are among those from Brong-Ahafo Region.