The Ashanti and Eastern regions recorded the largest numbers of multidimensionally poor people in Ghana, with each region accounting for more than one million affected individuals. This trend highlights how population size is increasingly reshaping the country’s poverty landscape, even as overall national indicators show improvement.
Although regions such as North East and Savannah continue to register the highest poverty incidence rates—exceeding 50 percent—the data indicates that more densely populated regions now bear the greatest absolute burden of deprivation.
Nationally, poverty remains deeply divided between rural and urban areas. As of the third quarter of 2025, multidimensional poverty in rural communities stood at 31.9 percent, more than twice the 14.2 percent recorded in urban areas, underscoring persistent inequalities in access to basic services and economic opportunities.
By contrast, Greater Accra and the Western Region recorded the lowest poverty incidence, both remaining below 20 percent. This contrast points to significant regional disparities that call for targeted, location-specific policy interventions.
The underlying causes of poverty remain largely structural. Deprivations related to living conditions and health are most pronounced, with lack of health insurance coverage contributing 26.5 percent to multidimensional poverty. This is followed by nutrition (14.4 percent), employment (12.3 percent), school attendance (8.5 percent), overcrowding (8.4 percent), and inadequate access to toilet facilities (8.0 percent) in Q3 2025.
However, the report also warns of emerging pressures that could erode recent progress. Between Q2 and Q3 2025, deprivation due to overcrowding nearly doubled, rising from 11.4 percent to 21.6 percent, while school attendance deprivation increased from 7.0 percent to 9.4 percent.
Employment-related deprivation also rose modestly, from 3.8 percent to 4.5 percent, signaling growing vulnerability in labour market outcomes among poorer households.
Taken together, the findings suggest that poverty reduction in Ghana is no longer solely about addressing areas with the highest poverty rates, but increasingly about responding to regions where the largest numbers of people are affected—an important shift with far-reaching implications for public spending priorities, infrastructure development, and the design of social protection programmes.
