Decent Work And The Working Poor: Evidence From Ghana

ABSTRACT

The number of global working poor far exceeds the number of unemployed people. Thus, employment creation is not sufficient for poverty alleviation. For this reason, the concept of ‘decent work’, which seeks to measure the quality and quantity of work was proposed by the ILO in 1999 as a necessary and sufficient condition for poverty eradication. Achieving universal decent work is now one of the first eight SDG’s to be achieved by all countries in 2030. Previous studies on decent work have taken a macro perspective with most of them failing to reveal the individual level of decent work and what influences decent work at the micro-level. The relationship between decent work and the working poor have not been studied relative to its importance. This study utilizesthe Round 7 of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS7), which contains decent work indicators and poverty dataset. The study creates decent work index using 11 indicators to elicit relevant information about the factors that determine decent work and analyze the relationship between decent work and the working poor in Ghana. The results from the descriptive statistics, binary and ordinal logistic regression indicate that individual personal characteristics (sex, age, education), employment status, industry, and employment sector are key determinants of decent work in Ghana. Women are more likely to experience decent work than their male counterparts. Education has a significantly positive influence on the probability of an individual engaging in decent work, with the returns being higher for women are than men. The study also found that decent work has a reducing effect on working poverty.The study concludes with a recommendation that for Ghana to achieve the first goal of the SDG of eliminating poverty of all forms, achieving universal decent work is key. In order to achieve universal decent work for Ghana, there is the need to invest in human capital through education, particularly that of women. Lastly, formalizing the informal economy in order to implement and enforce labour laws can help Ghana achieve universal decent work.