Determinants of incidence and depth of poverty in Ghana: Does development benefit the extreme poor?

Extreme poverty remains the norm for more than a billion people who subsist on less than the basic necessities required for day-to-day survival. The latest figures reveal that 2.2 billion people are poor or near-poor (UNDP, 2014). The issue of poverty has occupied the front burner in academic circles and public discourses in many developing countries for more than a few decades now. In view of this, the United Nations (UN), as one of the thematic areas of its Millennium Development Goals, launched a vigorous campaign to eradicate extreme poverty by 2015. The World Bank (1990) describes poverty as the inability to attain a minimum standard of living. In addition, the interlocking conditions of lack of assets, underemployment, low wages and incomes, proneness to disease, illiteracy, gender and economic vulnerability, social disadvantage and political powerlessness can also be defined as poverty (Glewwe & van der Gaag, 1990). Moreover, from an anthropological point of view, values such as selfrespect, security, vulnerability, independence, political rights, identity, decision making freedom, justice and social exclusion are associated with poverty (Masika et al., 1997). The varied perspectives on poverty lend credence to the fact that poverty is a multi-faceted phenomenon. Thus, a comprehensive grasp of the subject of poverty is crucial for devising an effective poverty-reduction strategy.