Effect of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy on Employment

Ghana’s poverty reduction strategy was fully implemented after the Highly Indebted Poor Country’s ascension in 2005. Although the policy had no clearer framework, the aim was to improve people’s living standards and then to eliminate poverty. In this thesis, I investigate the impacts of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy across 9 regions on employment. I use a panel dataset of the World Bank’s Survey based harmonized indicators data from 1992 to 2013. Using a difference-in-differences regression method, the effects on employment are estimated for each year. Positive effects were observed before and after the program and were significant.