LIVELIHOOD DIVERSIFICATION AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY IN GHANA: SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOOD FRAMEWORK APPROACH

Abstract

The study was set to investigate the impact of livelihood diversification on household’s multidimensional poverty in Ghana using the seventh round of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS7). Drawing its roots from the Sustainable livelihood framework approach, the study first identified the extent of livelihood diversification, the drivers of livelihood diversification across three quantiles of livelihood diversification index, the level of multidimensional poverty as well as the determinants of multidimensional poverty in Ghana. Results from the margalef index revealed that the Northern belt recording the least in terms of the extent of both crop and income diversification. The simultaneous bootstrapped quantile regression showed that both push factors, pull factors and location variables influence livelihood diversification at various quantiles in Ghana. Meanwhile, multidimensional poverty was relatively high in the country with the northern belt identified as the poorest belt followed by the middle belt and then the Coastal belt. Finally, while the impact of crop diversification was found to reduce multidimensional poverty at the lower and middle quantiles of diversification, income diversification was found to reduce multidimensional poverty at the higher levels of diversification. The study thus recommended that; households need to specialize after some level of diversification on-farm while non-farm income diversification activities should be encouraged since its impact outweigh specialization. Secondly, multidimensional poverty could be good a tool in measuring our progress in the achievement of the SDGs than the monetary approach given the limitation of the monetary approach. And finally, livestock rearing, encouraging saving group formation, extension service delivery as well as employment are vital policy instruments in fighting multidimensional poverty in Ghana.