Analysing household expenditure on education in Ghana: An update

Abstract

The study analysed household-level data derived from the latest GLSS VII collected as part of a 2016-2017 national survey in Ghana and focused on examining households' annual expenditure on education. The driving force behind this study was the lack of an empirical analysis of household spending on education using this most recent data. The study results are that an increase in annual household income of 100 cedis per year increases actual household expenditure on education by about 26 cedis. Households in the Savannah Zones in Ghana show positive annual expenditure on education, while the Forest and Accra Zones show negative correlations with education expenditure. The positive education budgets of rural households have the potential to bridge an unequal society, as rural students' access to education leads to greater inequality in the production of specialized human capital in Ghana and this is a significant finding. And policy-makers in Ghana must take pragmatic steps to drastically reduce the 36 percent of households that do not spend on education as a public education policy measure to achieve SDG4.