“Poverty Is a Killer of Dreams”: A Socioecological Qualitative Exploration of the Drivers of Adolescent Girls’ Vulnerability In Eastern Ghana

Background and Purpose: Adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa face intersecting challenges that threaten their education, health, and future prospects. Although poverty is widely recognized as a key driver, limited research examines how it operates across multiple levels of the social ecology. This study applies a socioecological framework to explore the multi-level drivers of adolescent girls’ vulnerability in a rural municipality in Ghana.

Methods: Using a qualitative design, 30 participants were purposively selected to reflect multiple socioecological levels of influence, including adolescent girls, caregivers, educators, community stakeholders, local non-profit organizations, traditional leaders, policy makers and service providers. Data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews and analyzed thematically, with findings organized according to socioecological levels.

Results: Vulnerabilities were interconnected across the social ecology. At the individual level, poverty undermined girls’ aspirations and well-being through hunger, poor health, and difficulty concentrating in school. At the interpersonal level, disrupted family structures, often due to parental migration, left girls without adequate care and increased reliance on transactional relationships. At the organizational level, schools and health systems were constrained in their capacity to support vulnerable girls, while local economic demands, such as market-day activities, pulled girls away from schooling. At the community level, harmful norms and stigma related to gender, pregnancy, and HIV further heightened risk. At the policy level, national programs, including Free SHS and school feeding initiatives, offered partial protection but were limited by implementation gaps. Together, these factors interacted to sustain a cycle of poverty and intergenerational disadvantage.

Conclusions and Implications: Poverty functions as a multi-level systemic force shaping adolescent girls’ vulnerability. Effective interventions must move beyond individual-level approaches to address the interconnected interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy contexts that structure girls’ lives. This evidence underscores the need for multi-sectoral, socioecologically informed interventions that respond to structural and relational drivers of vulnerability.