Policies Towards Poverty in Ghana and Tanzania in the 1990s
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
- Did private wage employees suffer from the trade liberalisation policies that characterised both economies in the 1990s?
- How did the reforms in the public sectors implemented over the period affect households headed by a public sector employee?
- Did relatively poorer households benefit from growth?
- Where did new employment opportunities come from?
- What are the implications for policy towards poverty from the comparison between the two countries?
ABOUT THE PROJECT
In both Ghana and Tanzania reports based on representative samples of households have shown that poverty fell in the 1990s. The Tanzanian Household Budget Survey 2000/01 used surveys from 1991 and 2000, nearly a decade apart, National Bureau of Statistics (2002). In Ghana there have been four households surveys carried out over the period from 1987/88 to 1998/99, Ghana Statistical Service (1995, 2000). The reports provide profiles of the correlates of poverty at a point in time and some comparisons over time. We use the data drawn from these surveys to compare how the fall in poverty was effected in the two countries. Both countries are regarded as relatively successful reformers over the 1990s with the reform process in Ghana under way from the mid 1980s. Comparing the two countries offers the opportunity to see if the processes of poverty change were similar and what we can learn about policy outcomes for the poor. From existing research we know that income opportunities for people living in developing countries are determined by a range of factors which include whether individuals have wage or non-wage opportunities, the income opportunities from self-employment, whether they live in rural or urban areas and the level of education attained [1].
In this project we seek to identify some of the paths by which households may have exited, and entered, poverty. As the samples are representative surveys, not panels, we cannot ask which individuals escaped poverty, we can however ask which types of household escaped poverty.