Accra: Multidimensional poverty in Ghana has decreased to 21.9 percent in the third quarter of 2025, demonstrating a continuous national improvement in living conditions. However, sharp regional, rural-urban, and social inequities persist, as highlighted in the latest Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) Statistics Bulletin released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS).
According to Ghana Web, this represents a reduction from 23.9 percent in the first quarter of 2025 and 23.1 percent in the second quarter, with GSS estimating that more than 360,000 people exited multidimensional poverty between these periods. On a year-on-year basis, about 950,000 people moved out of multidimensional poverty from the third quarter of 2024 to the third quarter of 2025. The MPI measures deprivation or poverty beyond income, capturing access to health, education, living conditions, and employment through 13 indicators including sanitation, housing quality, nutrition, health insurance, school attendance, and job security.
Despite the national progress, regional disparities remain stark. The North East and Savannah Regions recorded poverty incidence above 50 percent, more than double the national average of 21.9 percent, while the Greater Accra and Western Regions maintained rates below 20 percent. In absolute numbers, highly populated regions host large numbers of poor people even when incidence rates are moderate. The Ashanti and Northern Regions recorded the largest numbers of multidimensionally poor persons, each exceeding one million, reflecting population size and concentrated deprivation in the third quarter of 2025.
The rural-urban divide also remains wide, with rural poverty reaching 31.9 percent in the third quarter compared to 14.2 percent in urban areas, creating an 18 percentage-point gap. GSS stressed that while national poverty is falling, rural communities continue to bear a heavier burden, underscoring the need for targeted investments in infrastructure, sanitation, livelihoods, and service delivery.
Health and living conditions remain the dominant contributors to multidimensional poverty, accounting for 40.9 percent and 33.8 percent respectively. Major drivers include health insurance coverage at 26.5 percent, poor nutrition at 14.4 percent, overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, and weak housing quality. Education and employment are critical protective factors, as households headed by persons with no formal education recorded a poverty incidence of 38.5 percent compared with just 5.7 percent among those whose heads attained tertiary education. Employment quality also matters, with households headed by unemployed individuals consistently facing the highest poverty, peaking at 35.6 percent in the third quarter, followed by those in the private informal sector at above 22 percent.
The report highlights heightened vulnerability among persons with disabilities, households in informal unions, and some female-headed households. Households headed by persons living together or in informal unions recorded the highest poverty incidence at 33.1 percent in the third quarter of 2025. Poverty declined among divorced and separated household heads, but widowed and never-married heads saw increases. Households headed by persons with hearing or intellectual difficulties recorded poverty incidence of 43 percent and 33.6 percent respectively, well above the national average.
GSS also examined overlapping risks of poverty, unemployment, and food insecurity, indicating that about 227,500 people, or 1.5 percent, aged 15 years and above experienced the triple burden in the third quarter of 2025, slightly higher than the previous quarter. While the number of people facing both poverty and food insecurity declined to 3.6 million, the population facing both poverty and unemployment increased to roughly 483,000, signaling labor market pressures despite overall poverty reduction. Greater Accra, Ashanti, and Central Regions together accounted for about 57 percent of the triple-burden population.
GSS recommended expanding national health insurance coverage, improving sanitation infrastructure, strengthening school feeding and education support programs, scaling up skills development and job creation, and targeting interventions geographically and socially.