The Time and Consumption Poverty of Employed Individuals in Ghana

This study presents the application to the case of Ghana of a methodology for a two-dimensional poverty measure that takes both necessary consumption as well as the required household production needed to achieve a minimum living standard into account. The official poverty lines in Ghana and other countries assume that all households and individuals have enough time to adequately attend to the needs of household members. However, some individuals may not have sufficient time and they thus experience "time deficits." If a household experiencing a time deficit cannot afford to cover it by buying market substitutes (e.g., hiring a care provider), that household will enjoy a standard of living below that supposedly reflected in the official poverty measures. We show results of our estimates of the Levy Institute Measure of Time and Consumption Poverty (LIMTCP) for working individuals in Ghana, as well as the results of an employment simulation for individuals in poor households.