Free-riding and incidence of poverty in Ghana
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Abstract
Poverty levels in Ghana have largely been high among rural dwellers. The study assess the ex ante risk that if an individual is not currently below the poverty line, will slip past it, and the ex post possibility that those who are already in poverty will remain in it with increased severity. The FGT poverty class of index was first used. This showed that a proportion of 0.77 of the entire population under investigation was poor. Also, the poor trade hugely among themselves at 0.74 redistribution rate. Furthermore, to investigate the major determinants of poverty in Ghana resulting from free-riding, a dichotomous logit model was used. Most importantly, female household heads were found to be more vulnerable to poverty relative to their male counterparts. It was also observed that there has been a ‘poverty-switching’ phenomenon from the savannah zone to the coastal and forest zones of Ghana with deplorable consequences.