All that Glitters is not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana

Ghana is an exceptional case in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) 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, unlike many other countr...

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Main Authors:	Clementi, Fabio, Molini, Vasco, Schettino, Francesco
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	Elsevier 2018
Subjects:	CONSUMPTION POVERTY INEQUALITY POLARIZATION RELATIVE DISTRIBUTION DECOMPOSITION ANALYSIS HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29233

id	okr-10986-29233
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-292332021-05-25T10:54:43Z All that Glitters is not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana Clementi, Fabio Molini, Vasco Schettino, Francesco CONSUMPTION POVERTY INEQUALITY POLARIZATION RELATIVE DISTRIBUTION DECOMPOSITION ANALYSIS HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION Ghana is an exceptional case in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) 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, unlike many other countries in SSA, 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 over time 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. 2018-01-25T16:16:40Z 2018-01-25T16:16:40Z 2018-02 Journal Article World Development 0305-750X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29233 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Elsevier Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research Africa Ghana
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	CONSUMPTION POVERTY INEQUALITY POLARIZATION RELATIVE DISTRIBUTION DECOMPOSITION ANALYSIS HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION
spellingShingle	CONSUMPTION POVERTY INEQUALITY POLARIZATION RELATIVE DISTRIBUTION DECOMPOSITION ANALYSIS HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION Clementi, Fabio Molini, Vasco Schettino, Francesco All that Glitters is not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana
geographic_facet	Africa Ghana
description	Ghana is an exceptional case in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) 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, unlike many other countries in SSA, 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 over time 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	Journal Article
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	Elsevier
publishDate	2018
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29233
_version_	1764468828152004608

All that Glitters is not Gold : Polarization Amid Poverty Reduction in Ghana

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