Food poverty assessment in Ghana: A closer look at the spatial and temporal dimensions of poverty

The multifaceted nature of poverty in terms of its duration or chronicity, systematic changes, seasonality, variation, and risk or vulnerability makes its measurement and analysis complicated, especially in lower-income countries. In Ghana, data show that absolute poverty remains prevalent, and inequality has been rising. Despite the gradual decline in poverty, spatial income inequality has also become a concern in Ghana. This study develops a Foster-Greer-Thorbecke Poverty Measure based spatiotemporal model to investigate the variation in food poverty in Ghana. Application to population-based surveys fielded in 2012/13 and 2016/17 indicate that considerations of temporal and spatial dimensions of poverty have implications for gaging the level of deprivation among households and the potential allocation of scarce resources via policy to achieve poverty alleviation objectives. A model that jointly considers both the spatial and intra-annual dynamics arguably considered the most accurate and flexible but data-intensive one, resulted in the mean unconditional food poverty rate of 50%, with the lowest rate being the Northern Region in March (45%) and the highest rate being in the Upper West Region in June (54%). Overall, cost-wise, this flexible model also results in the highest potential cost savings.