Divergent Geographies of Disadvantage: Multidimensional Poverty and Teacher-Deployment Priority Across Ghana's 261 Districts

Ghana relies on two district-level rankings of disadvantage to guide equity policy: a census-based multidimensional poverty index and a teacher-deployment priority list. Because the deployment flag conditions on classroom overcrowding, the inverse care law predicts the two should diverge, yet policy treats them as interchangeable. This study examined whether the two rankings identify the same districts. This descriptive ecological cross-sectional study linked the 2021 Census multidimensional poverty statistics to the 2026 Teachers for All: Ghana classification across all 261 districts and 16 regions, applying Welch's t test, two one-sided tests of equivalence against pre-specified margins of 10.0 and 4.8 percentage points, cross-tabulation, and correlation analysis. Flagged and unflagged districts differ in mean poverty by 1.1 percentage points, statistically equivalent to zero (equivalence p = .038). The empirical area under the receiver operating characteristic curve is .53, and a poverty ranking recovers 10 of 53 flagged districts against 10.8 by chance. The regional correlation is near zero (r = −.06), though within flagged districts poverty tracks overcrowding severity (r = .42). Equity-oriented targeting therefore requires a two-dimensional logic, and Ghana's priority criterion should be extended to capture high-poverty rural districts whose classrooms are not overcrowded.