Public health and education spending in Ghana in 1992-98 : issues of equity and efficiency

Using primary data from the health and education ministries, and household survey data from the Ghana Statistical Service, the authors analyze equity, and efficiency issues in public spending on health, and education in Ghana in the 1990s. Public expenditures in the education sector, declined in the second half of the 1990s. Basic education enrollment has been stagnant, or declining in public schools, but increasing in private schools, resulting in a moderate increase in total enrollment. Regional disparities are significant, with lower public resource allocations, and lower enrollment ratios in the three poorest regions. The quality of basic education in public schools remains poor, while it has steadily improved in privateschools. Enrollments in higher levels are lagging behind those in basic education. Ghana ranks high among West African countries in health indicators, although its health expenditures tend to favor the non-poor. While more of the rural population have gained access to health services in recent years, many still have limited access, or none. Moreover, there is no link between the pattern of public expenditures - especially the pattern of immunization across Ghana - and health outcomes. To ensure that social services are efficiently, and equitably delivered in a fiscally constrained economy, the authors argue, public expenditures need to be linked to outcomes.Primary Education,Curriculum&Instruction,Teaching and Learning,Public Health Promotion,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Primary Education,Teaching and Learning,Gender and Education,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Curriculum&Instruction

Gender, poverty, and nonfarm employment in Ghana and Uganda

The authors provide evidence that women's non-farm activities help reduce poverty in two economically and culturally different countries, Ghana and Uganda. In both countries rural poverty rates were lowest - and fell most rapidly - for female heads of household engaged in non-farm activities. Participation in non-farm activities increased more rapidly for women, especially married women and female heads of household, than for men. Women were more likely than men to combine agriculture and non-farm activities. In Ghana it was non-farm activities (for which income data are available ) that provided the highest average incomes and the highest shares of income. Bivariate profit analysis of participation shows that in Uganda female heads of household and in Ghana women in general are significantly more likely than men to participate in non-farm activities and less likely to participate in agriculture.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Health Promotion,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Poverty Assessment,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance

Employment, labor markets, and poverty in Ghana

The slowdown and possible reversal in the rural-to-urban flow of labor in Ghana is symptomatic of a basic shortcoming in the country's economic recovery: the inadequate growth of the productive sector in the non-agricultural economy. The rate of growth of GDP has been adequate but much of the growth has been fueled and led by the services sector, which (at more than 46 percent) has surpassed agricultural as the main contributor to GDP. In some way growth in the services sector has been positive, but arguably it is a once-for-all adjustment to recovery that cannot be sustained at this growth rate without commensurate growth in both agricultural and non-agricultural production. Evidently, stabilization and liberalization measures have not been sufficient to put the industrial sector on a path of sustained growth. There is too little skilled labor in Ghana, and demand for industrial goods has been weak, in part because the cost of credit is high and savings are too low for inefficient, state-run enterprises to buy the equipment they need. Returns to higher (especially university) education are high in Ghana, largely because of high wages for government services. Because of inadequate technical and vocational education, returns to secondary education are low. Employment trends have mirrored the deficiencyin output growth. Every year since 1987, industrial employment has fallen. Every year since 1987, industrial employment has fallen. The growing labor force, which agriculture could not absorb productively, has spilled over into service activities and the informal sector is symptomatic of an economy with low growth potential. In the medium term, the surest way to absorb labor would be to increase investment in the agriculture sector by changing the composition in public spending. As long as the public sector wage bill remains a sizable part of government expenditure, an increase in wage levels not compensated by reduction in employment will create strains in the budgetary balance and will defeat the most important instrument of increasing the growth rate of employment--higher levels of public investment in agriculture. It is possible that a vicious circle is complete. Higher wages in the public sector might be necessary to increase efficiency, without which productive public investment is not possible. But if the government is not willing or able to reduce public employment, and is further unable to alter the composition of expenditure to provide more finance for agriculture-related public investment, a high wage public policy will merely fuel inflationary pressures and reduce the real investment ratio. The only way out of this vicious circle is a larger infusion of foreign and private investment than has been seen so far, supplemented by corrective monetary policy.Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Public Health Promotion,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Stabilization,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation