All that Glitters Is Not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana

Ghana is an exceptional case in the Sub-Saharan Africa landscape. Together with a handful of other countries, Ghana offers the opportunity to analyze the distributional changes in the past two decades, since four comparable household surveys are av...

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Main Authors:	Clementi, Fabio, Molini, Vasco, Schettino, Francesco
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English en_US
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2016
Subjects:	consumption expenditure poverty and inequality polarization concentration distribution decomposition analysis
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26585411/all-glitters-not-gold-polarization-amid-poverty-reduction-ghana http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24839

id	okr-10986-24839
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-248392021-04-23T14:04:27Z All that Glitters Is Not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana Clementi, Fabio Molini, Vasco Schettino, Francesco consumption expenditure poverty and inequality polarization concentration distribution decomposition analysis Ghana is an exceptional case in the Sub-Saharan Africa landscape. Together with a handful of other countries, Ghana offers the opportunity to analyze the distributional changes in the past two decades, since four comparable household surveys are available. In addition, different from many other countries in the continent, Ghana's rapid growth translated into fast poverty reduction. A closer look at the distributional changes that occurred in the same period, however, suggests less optimism. The present paper develops an innovative methodology to analyze the distributional changes that occurred and their drivers, with a high degree of accuracy and granularity. Looking at the results from 1991 to 2012, the paper documents how the distributional changes hollowed out the middle of the Ghanaian household consumption distribution and increased the concentration of households around the highest and lowest deciles; there was a clear surge in polarization indeed. When looking at the drivers of polarization, household characteristics, educational attainment, and access to basic infrastructure all tended to increase over time the size of the upper and lower tails of the consumption distribution and, as a consequence, the degree of polarization. 2016-08-09T19:28:14Z 2016-08-09T19:28:14Z 2016-07 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26585411/all-glitters-not-gold-polarization-amid-poverty-reduction-ghana http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24839 English en_US Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7758 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/ World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Africa Ghana
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English en_US
topic	consumption expenditure poverty and inequality polarization concentration distribution decomposition analysis
spellingShingle	consumption expenditure poverty and inequality polarization concentration distribution decomposition analysis Clementi, Fabio Molini, Vasco Schettino, Francesco All that Glitters Is Not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana
geographic_facet	Africa Ghana
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7758
description	Ghana is an exceptional case in the Sub-Saharan Africa landscape. Together with a handful of other countries, Ghana offers the opportunity to analyze the distributional changes in the past two decades, since four comparable household surveys are available. In addition, different from many other countries in the continent, Ghana's rapid growth translated into fast poverty reduction. A closer look at the distributional changes that occurred in the same period, however, suggests less optimism. The present paper develops an innovative methodology to analyze the distributional changes that occurred and their drivers, with a high degree of accuracy and granularity. Looking at the results from 1991 to 2012, the paper documents how the distributional changes hollowed out the middle of the Ghanaian household consumption distribution and increased the concentration of households around the highest and lowest deciles; there was a clear surge in polarization indeed. When looking at the drivers of polarization, household characteristics, educational attainment, and access to basic infrastructure all tended to increase over time the size of the upper and lower tails of the consumption distribution and, as a consequence, the degree of polarization.
format	Working Paper
author	Clementi, Fabio Molini, Vasco Schettino, Francesco
author_facet	Clementi, Fabio Molini, Vasco Schettino, Francesco
author_sort	Clementi, Fabio
title	All that Glitters Is Not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana
title_short	All that Glitters Is Not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana
title_full	All that Glitters Is Not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana
title_fullStr	All that Glitters Is Not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana
title_full_unstemmed	All that Glitters Is Not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana
title_sort	all that glitters is not gold : polarization amid poverty reduction in ghana
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2016
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26585411/all-glitters-not-gold-polarization-amid-poverty-reduction-ghana http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24839
_version_	1764457790404820992

All that Glitters Is Not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana

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