This paper analyses the determinants of participation in nonfarm activities and the impact of nonfarm employment on household income. A clear empirical regularity is that women are significantly less likely than men to be in wage employment and more likely than men to be in self-employment activities. We find also that households whose heads have completed secondary education or higher gravitate more toward wage employment. Nonfarm employment appears to be crucial for the alleviation from rural poverty in Ghana. With limited opportunities in agriculture, nonfarm employment is necessary to augment or supplement farm incomes.

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) having been used to explain the relationship between growth and environmental degradation has gained some attention in the finance literature in recent times. In this study, we re-conceptualize the EKC into a Financial Market Environmental Kuznets Curve (FMECK) that explains the relationship between financial development and sustainability, while introducing institutional quality as a moderator. The study posits that there is an Environmental Kuznets Curve for Africa and that the EKC holds for financial development and sustainability. Institutional Quality and Regulatory framework moderate the financesustainability nexus, which leads to the conceptualization of FMEKC. We find an inverted 'U' relationship between financial development and environmental degradation, which we explain using three arguments. We document that having a robust institutional framework in place could reduce the long-run adverse effects of financial development on the environment.

Childhood vaccination has been promoted as a global intervention aimed at improving child survival and health, through the reduction of vaccine preventable deaths. However, there exist significant inequalities in achieving universal coverage of child vaccination among and within countries. In this paper, we examine rural-urban inequalities in child immunizations in Ghana. Using data from the recent two waves of the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we examine the probability that a child between 12 and 59 months receives the required vaccinations and proceed to decompose the sources of inequalities in the probability of full immunization between rural and urban areas. We find significant child-specific, maternal and household characteristics on a child’s immunization status. The results show that children in rural areas are more likely to complete the required vaccinations. The direction and sources of inequalities in child immunizations have changed between the two survey waves. We find a pro-urban advantage in 2008 arising from differences in observed characteristics whilst a pro-rural advantage emerges in 2014 dominated by the differences in coefficients. Health system development and campaign efforts have focused on rural areas. There is a need to also specifically target vulnerable children in urban areas, to maintain focus on women empowerment and pay attention to children from high socio-economic households in less favourable economic times.

This paper chronicles the evolution of industry in Ghana over the post-independence era from an inward over-protected import substitution industrialization strategy of 1960-83 to an outward liberalized strategy during 1984-2000, and since 2001, to the private sector-led accelerated industrial development strategy based on value-added processing of Ghana's natural resource endowments. Over the last couple of years, industry in Ghana, dominated since independence by the manufacturing subsector, is gradually being overtaken by mining and quarrying subsector due to the discovery and subsequent production of oil and gas. Industry is mainly dominated by micro and small firms, privately-owned and mainly located within urban areas in the form of industrial clusters. Patterns of labour productivity and wages within Ghana's industrial sector indicate the food processing subsector, foreign-owned and older firms as the most productive. Currently under a medium-term agenda, the industrial sector is expected to play a pivotal role through enhanced growth in the construction sector; infrastructure development in the oil sector, energy and water subsectors and an increase in output from the mining sector, especially in salt production.The emerging policy issues relate to the key developmental objectives of the current industrial policy including how to empower the private sector especially SMEs to expand productive employment and technological capacity within a highly competitive manufacturing sector; how to promote agro-based industrial development to ensure value-addition to manufactures and Ghana's exports; and how to promote the spatial distribution of industries away from the current over-concentration of industries within urban areas.