Responding to Economic Shocks in Ghana: The Agricultural Sector as a Social Safety Net

Type Journal Article - electronic Journal of Agricultural and Development Economics
Title Responding to Economic Shocks in Ghana: The Agricultural Sector as a Social Safety Net
Author(s)
Volume 1
Issue 1
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2004
Page numbers 117-137
URL http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/12009/1/01010117.pdf
Abstract
The objective of this paper is to document, assess and characterize the role Ghana’s agriculture has played as a safety net when the urban labor market suffered economic shocks. The study explores how agriculture influences non-agricultural dependent households. Specific attention is given to the implicit value of the informal insurance role that rural households play in supporting family members who lose jobs acquired after migrating to urban areas. The paper analyses Ghanaian agriculture’s social security role in the late 1980s and 1990s. This well documented period in Ghanaian economic literature, coincides with both natural and macro policy shocks and the policy measures taken to cope with the shocks.

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