Private sector wages and poverty in Ghana: 1988-1998

Francis Teal

No 2000-06, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: Real wage rises for the unskilled are one mechanism by which poor people can obtain rises in their incomes and a reduction in their economic vulnerability. In this paper it is shown that over a period in Ghana when measured poverty declined, 1988 to 1992, real wages for the unskilled rose, by about 11 per cent. Over the 1990s evidence from the manufacturing sector suggests substantial falls in the real wages of the unskilled, some 23-26 per cent between 1992 and 1998. In the longer term such wages are lower than those of the mid 1980s and approximately one-third the level of the early 1970s. Even if poverty can be reduced in this context, any fall in poverty will omit one of the most vulnerable groups of the working population. There is evidence that high rates of inflation and low investment are two factors explaining these falls in real wages.

Keywords: Ghana; real wages; poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J30 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:507431e9-f97c-4d6e-bced-bc5222fc4c2f (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csa:wpaper:2000-06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Julia Coffey (csae.communications@economics.ox.ac.uk).