Education subsidy and school enrollments in rural Ghana

Abstract

This paper examines how education subsidy to basic schools has affected school enrollment in rural Ghana. The quest to achieve Universal Primary Education led to the introduction of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education policy in the mid-1990s, abolishing all fees in basic schools. The question then is, to what extent have those spending increases been effective in reaching poorest households? Combining the willingness-to-pay literature with benefit incidence analysis, the results indicate that basic schooling in rural Ghana is generally progressive with benefits more equally distributed than household expenditures.