3. Working Papers

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Browsing 3. Working Papers by Author "Abu, Benjamin Musah"

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    COVID-19 in Ghana: Consequences for Poverty, and Fiscal Implications
    (African Economic Research consortium, 2020-11-29) Issahaku, Haruna; Abu, Benjamin Musah
    This paper estimates the poverty consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and its fiscal implications in Ghana using a micro-simulation analytical approach applied to household level data collected in 2016/2017 by the Ghana Statistical Service. The results show that the poverty consequences are massive as poverty increased from a base of 20.5% to 34.0% and drove over 4 million pre-COVID non-poor into poverty. The poverty consequences are triggered by income losses of up to US$ 330 million and equalling 5.4% of monthly GDP. The pandemic has also worsened inequality as inequality rose from a base of 42.1% to 47.5%. The fiscal cost of a universal cash transfer potent enough to restore poverty to pre-COVID level is a monthly expenditure of US$ 186 million, which represents 3.1% of monthly GDP. COVID-induced interventions on water and electricity rebates for three months are less effective in reducing poverty. Disaggregated findings based on locality show varying depths of impact. The policy implications of these findings are important for appropriate interventions to tackle the consequences of the pandemic.
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    The Effects of Access to Credit on Household Nutritional Outcomes in Ghana
    (2023) Issahaku, Haruna; Abu, Benjamin Musah
    This study measures the effects of credit on anthropometric measures of children and women in Ghana's Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) zone. The study argues that children’s anthropometric measures share some relationship and thus need to be modelled as a system. Therefore, we employ the three-stage system of simultaneous equations (reg3) to deal with the structural system and endogeneity of credit in the children’s model, and an extended probit with binary endogenous covariate (eprobit) in the women’s model. In addition, we test the pathways of credit to nutrition using data from the USAID Ghana Feed the Future (FTF) baseline survey. The results show that credit has a simultaneously strong positive effect on nutritional outcomes of children and reduces the probability of a woman being underweight. Further, crop yield, market participation, income from crop sales, and non-farm business ownership are the key channels through which credit influences nutrition. Through relevant the institutions, the government should establish a full-blown farm credit policy to provide credit to farm households.