The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has identified employment and insurance coverage as the main factors that contribute to multidimensional poverty in the country.
According to its Multidimensional Poverty Index Scorecard, which covers all 261 Administrative Districts, employment affects 206 districts, while insurance coverage affects 55 districts.
The scorecard, released by the GSS as part of the commemorative activities for the 2023 African Statistics Day on Tuesday, November 21, 2023, shows that employment accounts for between 22.9 percent and 56.7 percent of multidimensional poverty across the 206 districts in question.
Insurance coverage, on the other hand, accounts for between 23.5 percent and 29.7 percent of multidimensional poverty across the 55 districts.
The multidimensional poverty indicator is a measure of non-monetary deprivation in four dimensions: living conditions, education, health, and employment.
It is based on the 2021 Population and Housing Census data. The indicator comprises 13 indicators in these four dimensions, such as electricity, housing, assets, overcrowding, cooking fuel, water, toilet facility, attendance, attainment, school lag, insurance coverage, mortality, and work for wage or profit.
The district scorecards provide statistics on the proportion of the population within the district that lives in multidimensionally poor households (experiencing multidimensional poverty), and the ranking of the district relative to other districts in the region and to all districts in the country. The scorecard also presents information on the areas in which poor persons in the district are most deprived.
The GSS further indicated that the incidence of multidimensional poverty in 23 districts is higher than 50 percent, which is more than twice the national rate of 24.3 percent. This means that more than half of the population in these districts is deprived of multiple dimensions of well-being.
The GSS called for urgent and targeted interventions to address this situation.
