Poverty Response to the Household Type of Elderly and Old-Age Pension

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of household type and old-age pension on poverty in Ghana. Primary data was collected from households with the elderly across six Districts in the country. A binary logistic regression estimation was used for the analyses. The result shows that whereas there was 14.4 times probability of being poor by living in an elderly only household, there is a 2.2 times probability of being poor in a household of the elderly and working-age person. The findings also show that the probability of a pension recipient being poor was 0.143 times less likely as compared to those that were not. Thus, there was a significant negative relationship between receipt of old-age pension and poverty. The study recommends that public policy on old age poverty alleviation must include pension provisions while those that use basic salary should consider using gross salary for pension calculation.