Ghana achieves MDG 1 target

Last Tuesday, August 26, a momentous occasion took place – not that many people noticed. Ghana’s Statistical Service (GSS) launched the new living standards survey for the country – the GLSS6. The survey was mammoth – an incredible 1,200 interviewers visited 18,000 households across the entire country over a period of a year.

They asked people questions covering issues from what they buy in the market, to when they were last sick, to what material their house is built of. In less than one year, GSS had captured, cleaned, and analysed this enormous treasure trove of information; a feat that most of our neighbours can only envy .

So what did the results show? Is Ghana truly the middle-income country that we are labelled as? Or do we still have a lot of work to do? Clearly, in many areas, the picture is mixed. Compared to the last household survey in 2006, more and more children are going to school; increasing numbers of people have health insurance and attend a clinic when they are sick; and the majority of people are now connected to the electricity grid.

There are other areas of concern and point to work that remains to be done: one in five people still do not use a toilet facility; child labour still stands at almost 22 per cent  of all children; and underemployment is high.

Poverty

But the big headline of the day was that, yes indeed, Ghana has achieved the MDG 1 target of halving poverty. We have gone from being a country where more than half of the population lived in poverty (in 1991), to one today where one in four people is poor. Very few countries have achieved this level of progress in poverty reduction. Ghana should be proud.

But what was the price of this achievement? What have we given up to become the Ghana of today? This week’s survey launch answered this question resoundingly. We have given up equity. 

We are sacrificing the opportunity to be a fair nation, sharing the spoils of our development with all. With the speed that Ghana achieved a middle-income status, we have left behind a huge group of people, while another smaller group of people sit on an increasingly large pile of benefits.

Since the 1990s, Ghana has had one of the fastest increasing inequality levels in the whole of Africa, and it has still not ceased to rise. We know that the richest fifth of the population earn more and more of the country’s income. 

This richest group now earn around half of everything in Ghana. While the poorest group have seen their share of the pie actually get smaller.

Why does this matter? If there is more money being made, some people will naturally do well, won’t they? True. But in other countries, as the economy expands, the government has to ensure that enough taxes are paid, so that enough services and transfers can be provided.

If one in four people in Ghana is poor – that’s 6.4 million men, women and children. And of those, a full 2.2 million people cannot even afford to have enough food to eat to sustain themselves adequately each day. How is that fair?

Fairness 

But it’s not just a question of fairness. Creating an equitable society is also a matter of being efficient. High inequality can actually reduce economic growth. It can lead to social unrest. And as the GSS survey showed, it has also reduced the country’s efforts to cut poverty. So making Ghana a more equal country would also boost its development.

It is laudable that the Government of Ghana has recognised this challenge. Opening the Pan-African Conference on Inequalities held in Accra in April this year, the President said “what we are now realising is that growth will not be sustainable unless we properly address the issue of wealth inequality in our societies and ensure that this growth we are experiencing is inclusive”.

 But until we tackle the tremendous challenge of an inefficient tax system that raises too little revenue to pay for the services and transfers (like the LEAP programme) that we need, the 2.2 million people in Ghana who cannot even afford their daily bread will continue to be marginalised and excluded from national mainstream development.

The writer  is Chief of Social Policy in UNICEF Ghana