Out of Sight, out of Mind? Examining Trends in Inter-Generational Family Support in Ghana

Within the recently abounding literature on global family change, one particular direction of historical change that has been documented involves a trend towards nuclear living arrangements comprising only primary kin, which has been shown to be most pronounced among countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (Esteve & Reher 2024). This trend towards nuclear arrangements resonates with accounts of several scholars claiming a nuclearization of the family in Ghana (Annim et al. 2015; Dzramedo et al. 2018; Kpoor 2015; Nukunya 2003; Oppong 1971, 1977; Tagnan et al. 2022). Nuclearization, according to these authors, comprises a transformation concerning the organization of family life, in which the traditional model of the extended family increasingly recedes in favour of the nuclear family, manifesting itself in corresponding alterations in the composition of households and intra-familial relationships, which involves the weakening of inter-generational ties between (adult) individuals and their parents. The few existing studies seeking to document these shifts, however, are either solely focusing on household compositions, which neglect family ties beyond the household, or are based on small-scale qualitative data. In this study, I seek to overcome these shortcomings by drawing on nationally representative repeated cross-sectional data from the Ghana Living Standards Surveys to trace how flows of financial and material support to and from non-coresident kin, particularly parents, have changed across the last decades in Ghana, and whether these trends resemble the alleged pattern of weakening inter-generational ties and family nuclearization more generally. Based on specific theoretical arguments, I further examine whether these trajectories evolve differently across socio-demographic groups of individuals. Given that families remain the primary source of social assistance and protection in the context of low levels of formal welfare provision in Ghana (Barrientos 2023), these trends can be assumed to entail profound implications for the well-being of individuals across generations.