6.4m Ghanaians Are Poor

Dr Philomena Nyarko – Gov't Statistician
About 6.4 million Ghanaians are said to be poor, a recent report by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has disclosed.

The report, known as the Ghana Living Standard Survey 6 (GLSS6), was launched yesterday in Accra. Anthony Kakrah, an official of

GSS, who presented the report, noted that 2.2 million Ghanaians were extremely poor, representing 8.4 percent of the population.

He said poverty has declined by 7.7 percentage points following the earlier trends of 1991 and 2006, stating that in 2005/06, the poverty rate was 31.9 percent.

He said the three Northern regions contribute more than a third to national poverty rate.

Mr Kakrah said households headed by farmers were the poorest in Ghana, adding that households headed by private sector workers had recorded improvement in their poverty levels.

He said the 24.2 percent of Ghanaians who are poor could not afford to spend GH¢3.60 per day which constitute the poverty line.

Touching on the extremely poor people, he said their situation meant 'putting all their expenditure together, they cannot afford to spend GH¢2.17 per day on food (GH¢792.05 per year).'

The GLSS started from October 18, 2012 to October 17, 2013 to collect detailed information on the demographic characteristics of the population, education, health, employment and time use.

Others included migration, housing conditions, household agriculture, participation in the labour force, child labour, household financial services and peace, governance and security in the country.

So far, Ghana has conducted six rounds of the GLSS.

The result of these survey have provided information for assessing which subgroups of the population enjoy high living standards and which sub-groups can be categorized as poor.

BY Cephas Larbi
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