Human Poverty Essay

Over the past few decades, new perceptions on poverty have challenged the focus on income and consumption as the defining condition of poor people. Studies regarding the problems of poor people and societies, and of the hindrances and prospects to improving their condition, have led to an understanding of poverty as a complex set of deprivations. These different perspectives have refocused the idea of poverty as a human condition that reveals failures in many aspects of human life. These failures among others include unemployment, homelessness, hunger, illness and health care, powerlessness and victimization, and social injustice. All these add up to an assault on human dignity (UNDP 2006, p7).

The evidence suffices that human poverty is a

Ghana over the past few decades has made spectacular strides towards combating this menace by introducing some social intervention programs. Among these social intervention programs are: the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP); Capitation Grant; School Feeding Program; free distribution of school uniforms, exercise books and textbooks; and the recent introduction of free Senior High Education. In addition, other projects aimed at improving health care delivery have also been implemented. These include the establishment of Community-based Health Planning Services (CHPS); national immunization against polio and indoor residual spraying against malaria carrying mosquitoes; the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme; and free maternal health care – all aim at reducing poverty.

These interventions would not have been possible without Ghana’s consistent economic growth over the years. Ghana’s economic growth began to pick up in the early 2000s after more than a decade of stable annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) at between 4 and 5 percent, and reached a steady rate of nearly 8 percent after 2006 (Molini and Paci 2015). In the last