Social Welfare Policy in Ghana: Current Provisions, Reach and Challenges

Abstract

Social welfare policies are intended to address social inequality arising from social structures that marginalize sections of the population. Ghana has pursued a near universal welfare policy since independence in 1957. However, economic decline in the 1970s and 1980s led to a rethink about such provisions. The chapter will review Ghana's attempt to re-institute universal welfare provisions that were scraped as part of the implementation of structural adjustment policies of the World Bank and IMF designed to stabilize the nation's economy in 1980s. It will detail education, health and other social policies and critically discuss their relevance within the framework of distributive and recognitive justice, the challenges of implementing such policies and ways to for improve service delivery.