Abstract:
The reduction in absolute poverty is a major goal of governments around the world. The 50 per cent reduction of the 1990 absolute level of poverty by 2015 is explicitly contained in the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of 2000 as the first major goal to be achieved by member States such as Ghana by 2015. In Ghana, agriculture accounts for about 35 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Ghana and employs around 60 per cent of the economically active population. With much of poverty burden in Ghana largely in the agricultural sector and also significantly laid on women, the analysis of socio-economic conditions and opportunities for people especially women in the agricultural sector is an important means to understand the causes of poverty and the means to reduce it. An important sub-sector of the agriculture sector in Ghana that is largely dominated by women is the traditional post harvest fishery processing. Fishmongers generally have low incomes and tend to live in poor conditions. There is a need to ascertain the determinants of poverty among fishmongers to establish appropriate policies that can be formulated to reduce the incidence of poverty among these people. This paper presents a study of the determinants of poverty among a relatively homogenous group of fishmongers living in Tema, Ghana based on cross-sectional data. Relatively homogeneity of the sampled fishmongers is expressed by the similar low level of educational attainment of the fishmongers. Our analysis focuses not just on economic variables that determine poverty but on social factors that influence poverty. The results indicate that the likelihood of a woman being poor increases with age until a certain middle age level when it declines. We find that unmarried women are not significantly more likely to be poor than those who are married. However the size of the household significantly decreases the likelihood of poverty as more people are available for the maintenance and expansion of the fishmonging business.