Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Poverty in Ghana Using Fuzzy Sets Theory

Kojo Appiah-Kubi, Edward Amanning-Ampomah and Christian Ahortor

Working Papers PMMA from PEP-PMMA

Abstract: The paper studies the multidimensional aspects of poverty and living conditions in Ghana. The aim is to fill the vacuum that has been left by traditional uni-dimensional measures of deprivation based on poverty lines, exclusively estimated on the basis of monetary variables such as income or consumption expenditure. It combines monetary and non-monetary, and qualitative and quantitative indicators, including housing conditions, the possession of durable goods, equivalent disposable income, and equivalent expenditure, with a number of composite human welfare measures. The study employs the fuzzy-set theoretic framework to compare levels of deprivation in Ghana over time usig micro data from the last two rounds of the Ghana Living Standard Surveys (1991/1992 and 1998/1999). The estimation results of the membership functions, depicting the levels of deprivation for the various categories of deprivation indicators, show a composite deprivation degree of 0.2137 for the whole country in 1998/99 as compared to 0.2123 in 1991/92. This deprivation trend reveals that poverty levels hard scarcely changed in Ghana. In fact, it even rose slightly during the nineties, contrary to the uni-dimensional analytical GLSS 4 report of an overall broadly favourable trend in poverty in Ghana during the 1990s.

Keywords: Ghana; fuzzy set; multi-dimensional poverty; composite deprivation or poverty index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A1 A2 A23 A29 I3 I32 I38 I39 R2 R20 R21 R22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lvl:pmmacr:2007-21

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