Understanding Ghana’s growth success story and job creation challenges

Abstract

Ghana's status as one of the African Lions is linked to the country's remarkable growth performance, which culminated in the attainment of lower middle-income status. However, employment response to growth has been weak. Additionally, growth has been accompanied by substantial reduction in poverty, albeit increasing inequality. This development is explained by a slower growth in high labour absorption sectors of agriculture and manufacturing as against high growth in low employment generating sectors of mining and oil extraction. Fixing the problem of the missing middle of dwindling manufacturing and raising productivity in agriculture are recommended for the promotion of growth inclusiveness.

Monetary Policy and Income Inequality in Ghana

“…This finding contradicts that of Danquah and Ohemeng (2017) and Aryeetey and Baah-Boateng (2015) who note that, growth in Ghana is mainly due to growth in the service sector which does not impact on the lives of the lower class of the economic ladder and by implication disproportionately benefit the upper and middle classes.…”

All that Glitters is not Gold: Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana

“…Recent contributions pinpointing at this this problem (Aryeetey and Baah-Boateng, 2015;Cooke et al, 2016) focus mainly on the last decade. Our paper, on the other hand, takes a more long-term approach and shows that important distributional changes such as the steady increase in consumption polarization, have started long before 2005.…”

“…Ghana's rapid growth did translate into fast poverty reduction. Inequality increased over the last two decades (Aryeetey and Baah-Boateng, 2015;Cooke et al, 2016) but, compared to other SSA countries, Ghana still fares relatively well. When ranking SSA countries according to the average Gini index over the last 20 years Ghana occupies the bottom 20 percent of the Gini distribution and despite some deterioration, in 2012, it was still below the median and among the lowest of rapidly growing African economies (Molini and Paci, 2015).…”

Labour Casualisation and Youth Employment in Ghana’s Formal Private Sector

“…This article explores casualisation of youth 2 labour and the precarity of employment in Ghana's formal private sector, through a case study of Blue Skies Holdings Ltd, an agro-processing firm. Like many other African countries, Ghana is experiencing 'jobless growth', where economic growth is not matched with job creation in the formal sectors of the economy (Aryeetey and Baah-Boateng 2016). The jobless growth phenomenon shows up more in the casualisation of jobs and their vulnerability to shocks, rather than extremely high levels of general joblessness.…”