Changes in parent-child living arrangements may arise as a result of death, divorce, separation or child abandonment that may also reflect changes in household headship. This study, therefore, seeks to examine whether the household composition has a significant influence on the educational attainment of children. This is based on the context of the much debate in the research literature on the influence of the type of parents living arrangements with children and children’s educational attainment.

Popenoe (1996) postulated that getting to the end of the twentieth century, there will be a rapid and drastic increase in the number of households with only one parent living with children. Zeng and Xie, (2014) as well as Zhou et al. (2014) indicated that parent-child living arrangements could have a major influence on the education of children. A study by Amoateng et al. (2017) examined the effect of family structure on children’s schooling in sub-Saharan Africa. They employed Multi-level Modeling to analyse data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in 26 African Countries and found that both polygyny and the presence of a husband in the home reduce children’s education.

It has been recorded in the 2007 Ghana Maternal and Health Survey report that, the characteristics of households, including the type of parents’ living arrangements with their children, may have demographic, social and economic implications and well-being of individuals that live in them. Fury et al. (2010); Liu (2007); Milla and Ridge (2001) and Thiessen (1997) viewed the households where children live with both parents as the ideal households for children’s educational progression but considered children who live with only one of their parents as lacking the needed community resources that will help them to develop their educational potentials. 

However, Donahoo (2003); McLanahan and Sandefur (1994) and Mott (1994) do not attribute any failures among children especially in school in its entirety to the presence or absence of a parent or both parents. Rather, they considered the circumstances that surround every household living arrangement and concluded that living in any kind of parent-child living arrangement must not necessarily ascribe doom to any particular child to failure as many children from one-parent homes have grown up to become productive adults. 

Meanwhile, changes in parent-child living arrangements have the potential to arouse social concerns because of the belief that single-parent families typically have fewer resources, particularly time and income, than two-parent families (Kim and Sherraden, 2011; Boggess, 1998). For instance, in the USA, it was estimated that 42 per cent of children in female-headed families were poor in 1999, compared with the eight per cent of children in married-couple families (Kim and Sherraden, 2011). Unfortunately, the HIV/AIDS menace has even worsened the situation of children who have to live with either one or none of their parents in the household (Chi and Li, 2014).

It was estimated that over 14 million children in Africa were orphaned by HIV/AIDS deaths (Doku, 2009). By the end of 2010, nearly 17.1 million (range from 15.4 to 19.1 million) children globally below 18 years of age have lost one or both parents to AIDS (Chi and Li, 2014). In such a situation when the children have no one to support them through education, they stand the risk of abandoning school or dropping out to work in order to engage in any activities that will enable them to survive. These changes have been used by some to argue that the world is witnessing the breakdown of the family with negative effects for children, families, and society (Marsh, 1990; Thiessen, 1997).