Fertility and Urban Context: A Case Study from West Africa Using Remotely Sensed Imagery and GIS

Magdalena Benza Fiocco, San Diego State University

The characteristics of places where people live and work play an important role in explaining complex social, political, economic and demographic processes. In sub Saharan Africa rapid urban growth combined with rising poverty is creating diverse urban environments inhabited by people with a wide variety of lifestyles. This paper explores how spatial patterns of land cover in a southern portion of the West African country of Ghana are associated with particular characteristics of family organization and reproduction decisions. Satellite imagery and landscape metrics are used to create an urban gradient based on the morphology of settlements for a uniform grid cell unit of analysis. Census data is used to estimate fertility levels and household structure then aggregated to the grid cell level. The association between urban gradient, household composition and fertility levels is modeled through regression and spatial auto regressive models.