London, August 1, 2020 (AltAfrica)-The number of Ghanaians living in multidimensional poverty reduced by 14,115,572 in seven years, between 2011 and 2017, according to the latest report from the Ghana Statistical Service’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

Ghana Statistical Service, GSS said focusing on the three central statistics of the MPI-Health, Education and Living Standards, the analysis suggests that between 2011 and 2018, multidimensional poverty has reduced in Ghana in all the measures. (MPI, incidence and intensity).

The report said the MPI decreased from 0.298 to 0.236 between 2011 and 2017 and the difference is “statistically significant” at the one per cent alpha value.

“From 2011 to 2018, the MPI decreased from 0.298 to 0.247 registering a statistically significant difference over the years”, it noted.

The report noted, however, that “though the MPI increased by 0.011 between 2017 and 2018, the increment is not statistically significant”.

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“These reductions are statistically significant for survey periods 2011 to 2017 and 2011 to 2018 but not for survey period 2017 to 2018”, the report said, adding: “It is worth mentioning that the 2017 to 2018 survey period using the 2017 GLSS and the MICS 2018 are not statistically significant”, explaining: “Comparisons in this section focus on the harmonised MICS 2011 and the GLSS 2017 surveys”.

It explained that the headcount ratio decreased from 55 per cent in 2011 to 46 per cent in 2017.

“This means over the period, the number of people living in multidimensional poverty in Ghana reduced by 14,115,572 people”, the report explained.

Additionally, it said the “intensity of poverty declined from 54.2 per cent to 51.7 per cent”.

“The decline in the incidence and intensity of poverty are both statistically significant”, it added.

The report noted that except for overcrowding, school attendance, school lag, and nutrition, the censored headcount ratios for all the remaining indicators “declined significantly between 2011 and 2018, with the largest absolute reductions recorded for electricity, cooking fuel, sanitation and water”.

“The increase in housing in 2017 may be a result of different categories available in the survey question in GLSS compared to MICS”, the report explained.

It said “improvements in electricity (16.3 percentage points), cooking fuel (15.2 percentage points) and school attainment (12.3 percentage points)” outperformed “similarly impressive reductions in the censored headcount ratios of other indicators like nutrition (2.30 percentage points) and school attendance (0.50 percentage points)”.

“Our results show that 45.6 per cent of Ghana’s population are multidimensionally poor. The indicators that contribute most to multidimensional poverty in Ghana are lack of health insurance coverage, undernutrition, school lag and households with members without any educational qualification. The intensity of poverty is 51.7 per cent, meaning that poor people experience, on average, more than half of the weighted deprivations. The MPI, which is the product of the incidence and intensity of poverty, is 0.236. Comparing the incidence of Ghana’s multidimensionally poor of 45.6 per cent to the incidence of consumption expenditure poverty of 23.4 per cent revealed a difference of 22.2 percentage points”, the report pointed out.

A scrutiny of both estimates, however, revealed that 19.3 per cent of the population are both multidimensionally and consumption expenditure poor; 4.1 per cent are consumption expenditure poor but not MPI poor; and 26.3 per cent are MPI poor but not consumption expenditure poor.

The analysis, therefore, suggests that a majority, constituting approximately 82.3 per cent of people who are monetary poor are also MPI poor.

“The reverse, however, is not true”, the report noted, noting: “A greater proportion of the MPI poor (26.3%) are not monetary poor and would, thus, be excluded from any poverty policy initiative based on the monetary measure”.

As expected, it said the rural-urban differences are evident, with 64.6 per cent of the rural population and 27.0 per cent of the urban population being multidimensionally poor.

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