Ghana - Ghana Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire Survey 1997, First round

v2.0 Edited, anonymous dataset for public distribution.

1998-08-27

The 1997 Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire (CWIQ) Survey is a nationwide probability sample survey designed to provide simple indicators on timely basis for monitoring poverty and the effects of development policies, programmes and projects on living standards in the country. The survey was conducted by the Ghana Statistical Service with technical assistance from the World Bank. The fieldwork for the survey was carried out between September 1997 and November 1997.

The main objectives of the 1997 CWIQ Monitoring Survey are:

1· To furnish policy makers, planners and programme managers with a set of simple indicators for monitoring poverty and the effects of development policies, programmes and projects on living standards in the country.

2· To provide reliable data on timely basis for monitoring changes in the welfare status in various sub-groups of the population.

3· To ensure rapid data capture, processing, tabulation and analysis.

4· To ensure optimal precision by the use of as large a sample as is feasible, given national statistical resource constraints and the need for rapid results.

5· To eliminate data entry bottlenecks through the use of “scanning” technique with Optical Mark Reader (OMR).

Household and demographic characteristics:

A total of 14,514 households were successfully interviewed. An average household size of 4.1 was obtained for the country with rural households having an average household size of 4.3 compared with 3.8 for urban areas. Generally, households in the poorer quintiles and those in the rural parts of Northern Ghana recorded the highest average household size.

Education:

The literacy rate for the nation is 47.9 percent. The rate for males (62.3%) is considerably higher than that of females (36.4%). The urban rate of 63.0 percent is significantly higher than the rural rate of 39.9 percent. In the rural areas, the Volta

Region has the highest literacy rate of 55.7 percent while in the urban areas, Greater Accra Region has the highest rate of 75.7 percent. The Northern Region has the lowest rate in both rural (6.9%) and urban (37.9%) areas.

Health status:

Pregnant women in the country are more likely to receive pre/post natal care than delivery care. Whereas 87.2 percent of pregnant women received pre/post natal care, only 28.3 percent received delivery care. Generally, women in rural areas are less likely to receive maternity care than their counterparts in the urban areas. Majority of households that reported sick in the four weeks preceding the survey are from the poorest quintiles where the household head was unemployed (27.8%). A breakdown of the type of sickness suffered by respondents, indicate that while the incidence of fever/malaria was higher in the urban areas, the incidence of diarrhoea/gastro intestinal disease was more evident in rural Ghana (3.4%).

Employment:

The unemployment rate for the country is 3.9 percent, comprising 4.7 percent males and 3.2 percent females. The urban rate (9.2%) is relatively higher than the rural rate of 2.3 percent. Eastern Region has the highest rural unemployment rate of 4.2 percent while Upper West Region has the lowest of 0.2 percent. In the urban areas, Ashanti Region has the highest unemployment rate (9.9%) while Upper West Region has the lowest of 2.4 percent.

Household ammenities, assets and access to services:

Over a third (37.3%) of all households own their dwellings, 18.4 percent pay rent while the remaining do not pay any rent. Ownership of home is most common among households headed by own-account workers in the agriculture sector, and is

also predominant in rural (46.9%) than urban (18.9%) areas.

The national average number of rooms per household is 2.0, that for rural households is 2.1 and that for urban is 1.8. Over half (57.7%) of all households live in mud or mud-brick homes while 40.9 percent occupy stone or burnt-brick or cement houses.Most households in the country use fuel wood for cooking: 69.1 percent use firewood and 26 percent use charcoal. With regard to lighting fuel, kerosene (83.2%) is most common in rural areas and among the poorest households, whereas electricity (78.4%) predominates in the urban areas and among the non-poor households.

About a quarter (25.4%) of all households have access to flush toilets, 20.4 percent use “KVIP” toilet, 25.2 percent use pit latrine, while 22.8 percent have no toilet facilities. The use of modern toilet facilities is generally an urban phenomenon.

Nearly forty percent (39.9%) of all households have access to pipe-borne or protected well water, while over a third (34.2%) depend on unprotected well/river/lake for their drinking water. Households headed by own-account workers in the agricultural sector are the worst off.

Ownership of land and livestock is most noticeable in rural than urban areas, and is predominated by households headed by own-account workers in the agricultural sector, particularly in the northern regions. Ownership of electrical appliances is

common among less poor households especially those headed by workers in the formal sector. In all 17.4 percent of households own a bicycle, 1.2 percent own a motorcycle and 2.3 percent own a car. Rural households tend to own a bicycle and/or a motorcycle while their urban counterparts are more likely to own a car.

Sample survey data [ssd]

Households, Individuals