Inequality of Opportunity and Children’s Educational and Health Outcomes in Ghana

Abstract

What a child experiences during the early years lays down a critical foundation for the entire life course. A child‘s development, including physical, social–emotional and language–cognitive domains, during the early years strongly influences basic learning, school success, economic participation, social citizenry and health. A healthy child population is not only one of the indicators of a society‘s present health, but it is also an index of the society‘s future well being and productivity. Using the Ghana Living Standard Survey Round 5 Plus (GLSS 5+) data conducted in 2008, the study employed Roemer‘s equality of opportunity model adopted from Checchi and Peragine (2005) to examine the determinants of inequality of opportunity in educational outcomes of children aged 5-12 years and health outcomes of children aged 0-59 months in Ghana. The study used cognitive ability as a measure of educational outcome for children aged 5-12 years whiles anthropometric measures were used for short and long term nutritional and health status of under-five children in Ghana. Employing quantile regression analysis, the study found that there was inequality of opportunity in children‘s educational and health outcomes in Ghana. It then recommended that, Government should, therefore, invest more resources on high quality early childhood education programs that integrate both schooling and nutrition so that Ghanaian children who do not have adequate access to resources that privileged Ghanaians provide for their kids, could have a good basis of development at the early stages of life.