Will the free Senior High School policy reduce poverty in Ghana?
Date
2019-04
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Abstract
Several government policies have been implemented in the quest to enhancing
educational access in Ghana. A recent one is the free SHS system that was introduced in
2017. The goal of the free SHS system is to reduce poverty by eliminating household
need to pay fees for senior high education, especially for the poor who it had been shown
are not accessing education because of the costs. This paper investigated whether the free
SHS system will reduce poverty in Ghana.
Using 2017 cross-sectional data from GLSS round seven, the study employed a
quantitative approach through descriptive analysis and simulations in achieving the aims
of the research. The descriptive analysis revealed that there still exists a bias between
poor and the non-poor, rural and urban areas as well as deprived and least-deprived
regions in Ghana with regards to their consumption of secondary education.
The simulated effect of the free SHS policy was a 2.56% and 0.76% decrease in
poverty headcount rate for urban and rural households respectively. The total poverty rate
also decreased by 0.86% from 23.4% to 23.2%. The fall in poverty levels implies that the
increase in consumption on secondary education (because of the subsidy) lowered
poverty rates as more people can afford education. Despite the decrease in poverty rates,
the issue of targeting government subsidies remains a problem. There still exists some disparity as poor and rural households receive the least amount of the government
subsidy.
Description
Undergraduate thesis submitted to the Department of Business Administration, Ashesi University, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration, April 2019
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Keywords
Ghana, free Senior High School policy, poverty, subsidy, simulation