Reducing poverty among youth with labour intensive public work (LIPW) programme: evidence from the Daffiama bussie Issah district in Ghana

In 2010, the Government of Ghana launched a Labor-Intensive Public Work (LIPW) program under the Ghana Social Opportunities Project (GSOP). It earmarked USD 56 million for the execution of the program in 60 relatively poor districts of Ghana. The program is intended to offer jobs and income-earning opportunities to some identified rural poor, especially the youth, during seasonal labor demand shortfalls through the rehabilitation and maintenance of public or community infrastructure like roads and dams. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which the program has reduced poverty among the youth in the Daffiam Bussie Issah District in Ghana as a case study. A mixed research method involving both qualitative and quantitative techniques was employed in the study. The authors adopted a matched case-control study design. 90 beneficiary youth in 3 beneficiary communities of the LIPW program were compared with 90 youth in 3 other non-beneficiary communities of the same district. Focus group sessions were also held with the youth to understand how the program has impacted their lives. The study revealed that beneficiary youth of the LIPW program were able to increase their livestock numbers by 79.1%, their monthly incomes by 24.26%, their food consumption by 16.75% and their farm size by 47.72%. The study therefore recommended that the government of Ghana should scale up the LIPW program to cover more communities in order to reduce poverty in Ghana.