Transcript Slide 1

MEASURING, COMPILING, ANALYZING
AND REPORTING ON LABOUR STATISTICS IN
GHANA
SELASE ASSEMSURO
STATISTICAL SERVICE, ACCRA
22 - 24 NOVEMBER, 2010
BACKGROUND
• The Ghana Child Labour Survey (2001) is the
only available labour force survey in Ghana
• It was conducted between January and
February 2001, with technical assistance
from International Labour Organization (ILO)
• Other national surveys exist but provide very
limited information on labour statistics
• This presentation will mainly focus on the
Ghana Child Labour Survey.
OBJECTIVES OF CHILD LABOUR SURVEY
1. To determine the nature, magnitude,
and reasons for child labour; and
2. To assess the effect of child labour
on children’s education, health,
morals and normal development.
METHODOLOGY
• The survey covered children aged 5-17
years in both households and on the
street
• A nationally representative sample of
10,000 households was selected, out of
which 9,889 households were successfully
interviewed
• A purposive sample of 98 known locations of
street children was also taken and interviews
conducted with children identified in these
locations.
Two main data collection tools were used:
Household questionnaire
– Street children questionnaire
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The household questionnaire was administered to both head of household or any other
responsible member of the household and the child. It contained items such as:
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HOUSING / HOUSEHOLD CHARACTERISTICS
INFORMATION ON HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS
USUAL ECONOMIC ACTIVITY OF CHILDREN 5-17 YEARS DURING THE LAST 12 MONTHS
CHILDREN 5-17 YEARS OLD WORKING AS EMPLOYEES FOR SOMEONE ELSE FOR PAYMENTS INCASH OR IN-KIND etc
The street children questionnaire on the other hand gathered information on homeless
children. It contained items such as:
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SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS
LIVING ARRANGEMENTS
ECONOMIC ACTIVITY OF STREET CHILDREN
HEALTH, SAFETY AND RELATED ISSUES AFFECTING STREET CHILDREN
ASSISTANCE TO STREET CHILDREN etc.
The survey was preceded by two months of preparatory activities, including development of
study design and pretest of data collection instruments.
DATA PROCESSING AND ANALYSIS
• Completed questionnaires were subjected to
rigorous office editing before data capture
• Data processing started after one week of
training
• Training involved 15 data entry operators from
the GSS and the Ministry of Manpower
Development and Employment, from which ten
(10) were selected for data capture
• The main data entry software used is the
Integrated Microcomputer Processing System
(IMPS)
Edit programs in CONCOR were used to edit the
data, after which error listings were printed and
corrected at the EA level.
After editing in CONCOR, the ASCII data files were
merged for further editing using SPSS and SAS. This
was done by running consistency checks on every
variable in the database.
Tabulations and further analyses were carried out in
SAS and SPSS.
Estimates, standard errors, confidence intervals
and design effects were also generated using the
CENVAR module in IMPS.
FINDINGS
• Estimated population of children aged 5-17 years
is 6,361, 111 (35.5% of national population).
• Number of children who worked 7 days before
the interview is 1,984,108 (31.2% of children).
• Number of children engaged in child labour is
1,273,294 (20.0% of children).
• Number of children engaged in child labour as a
percentage of working children is 64.2%.
• The underlying reasons for child labour
are poverty and low incomes
SOME POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
• Until parents are able to support themselves
financially, children would continue to be used to
help top up household incomes. This means that
Government’s policy of creating wealth to reduce
poverty needs to be seriously pursued.
• Local and international support, especially in rural
areas, should be explored to enable households
improve on their income generation potentials.
• Government should fully implement free Compulsory
Universal Basic Education (fCUBE) to make education
more accessible to poor households.
SOME POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS
• In regions where population of children attending
school is low, special programmes, including the
provision of school uniforms, could be a good support
for some poor households.
• Ghana Child Labour Survey (GCLS) recommends
maximum of 4 hours for a child under 15 years of age
to be engaged, beyond which he/she would be said to
be exploited.
• Special programmes should be provided to improve
infrastructure and create employment opportunities
in rural areas to curb the rural-urban drift by children
Thank you