A recent report by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) revealed that close to 7 million Ghanaians are getting by on less than a dollar a day.
The GSS report on poverty and inequality shows that about 25% of Ghanaians live on less than GHC 4.8. This is about 6.8 million people unable to afford more than a dollar a day. This figure is sure to be a subject of politics in Ghana in the coming weeks.
Politics news from YEN sights that the report, titled “Trends on Poverty and Inequality” goes on to show that about 2.4 million Ghanaians live in extreme poverty. This means that they cannot afford to live above GHC 2.69 per day. The United Nations description of poverty is living under a dollar a day and this is the metric the Ghana Statistical Service used to conduct the survey and come to the conclusions above. Unlike most things in politics news, this metric is agreed upon by most governments.
The survey data was gathered for a period between 2016 and 2017. Here are some calculations for perspective. The statistics given above mean most Ghanaians cannot afford to live above GHC 1760 a year. This means they cannot to buy a two-year-old iPhone even if they saved every penny they earned for the two years. The report goes on to state that the three northern regions make up for more than 40% of national poverty numbers. In the presence of significant growth and the absence of inequality the fight against poverty would have gone a long way. The Greater Accra region has the least number of poor people whereas the Upper West region is the poorest according to the report.
