Demographic and sociocultural factors influencing use of maternal health services in Ghana.

Using data from the 1993 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS), this study investigates the demographic and sociocultural determinants of use of maternal health services. The maternal health services considered in this study are: i) use of a doctor for prenatal care; ii) soliciting antenatal check-up; iii) place of delivery and, iv) family planning. Logistic regression is employed to explore the relative importance of age at marriage, number of living children, education, place of residence, occupation, region of residence, religion, ethnicity, and age on the likelihood of using maternal health services. Multivariate analyses reveal that the use of the four maternal health services under study tend to be shaped mostly by level of education, place of residence, region of residence, occupation, and religion. Programmatic implications of these results are discussed.