Summary, conclusion and recommendations
Abstract
The various socio-demographic characteristics present challenges as well as opportunities. The challenges include creating employment for the young and fairly well-educated population, dealing with the increasing proportion of the population in urban areas and the associated rural urban migration, especially to Accra. The opportunities include taking advantage of the demographic dividend associated with fertility decline and the subsequent increase in the active population. After five decades of independence, Ghana is yet to achieve universal education. This is accentuated by the low level of formal education among people in Northern, Upper West and Upper East regions. These are also regions where free education has been available since independence. The situation existing in the three northern regions would need to be studied for the factors accounting for the observation. Given the results, government should re-double its efforts towards the achievement of Millennium Development Goal 2, if not by the stipulated period of 2015, in the next shortest possible period. This will mean paying particular attention to areas with low enrolment rates such as the three northern regions. Migration has played a major role in the economic development of the country in the past and will continue to do so. The first step towards an effective management of migration in a country is to have a national migration policy. Linked closely to the issue of migration is its contribution to urban growth. While there was internal growth in the urban areas through natural means, the change in population could be partly attributed to the re-classification of urban settlement in the face of rapid urbanisation. For effective urban planning and reduction in overlaps in metropolitan and peri-urban areas, there will be the need to consider the paradigms for re-classification of urban areas. Estimates derived from the 2010 Census data indicate that both infant and under-five mortality are higher in rural than in urban areas. Inequities in the distribution of medical and health facilities, and the availability of other social services such as sanitation and water between rural and urban areas would need to be addressed. For instance, the provision of Community Health Planning Services (CHIPS) compounds in the rural areas would have to be vigorously pursued while at the same time improving the stock and quality of health infrastructure and accessibility in all parts of the country. Furthermore, the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) project should be monitored and the lessons learnt applied to other deprived regions of the country. The inclusion of disability in the 2010 PHC has provided opportunity to assess the social, demographic and economic characteristics of PWDs. The results should inform the development of strategies which will respond to the Disability Act. For instance, the low level of education among persons with disability would need to be factored into the programme for achieving MDG 2. These are people who are likely to be left behind in the development process. In the 2007 Ghana Human Development Report (UNDP, Ghana, 2007), for instance, PWDs were classified under others (with the elderly who had no access to family care and pension) and those with mental disabilities put under health. The results present a challenge which would have to be addressed in a more comprehensive manner. It will also be useful for the module on PWDs to be repeated in subsequent censuses. The use of ICT for interaction, communication and business has become critical in this knowledge age. While there is evidence of mobile phone penetration, there will be the need to monitor its penetration to ensure that some people are not left behind. There should be a conscious effort to promote ICT based on the information available from the census data. In the last few years, efforts have been made in drafting policies that seek to enhance the provision of services for the urban population. These include the drafting of a National Urban Policy, a National Housing Policy, a National Urban Transport Policy, Water and Sanitation policy, as well as a National Migration Policy among others. It is important that these policies are informed by available data on the multifaceted nature of and the inter-linkages in population issues. The available data from 50 years of modern census taking should be used to inform planning in this country. Finally, the new modules which were introduced in the 2010 PHC should be repeated in subsequent censuses so that trends could be established over time.
Cite this
APA
Tawiah, E. O., Codjoe, S. N. A., Anarfi, J. K., & Fayorsey, C. K. (2013). Summary, conclusion and recommendations. In Ghana Statistical Service (Eds.), 2010 Population and Housing Census. National Analytical Report (pp. 1–5). Ghana Statistical Services.
Harvard
Tawiah, E. O. et al. (2013) ‘Summary, conclusion and recommendations’, in Ghana Statistical Service (eds) 2010 Population and Housing Census. National Analytical Report. Ghana Statistical Services, pp. 1–5.
BibTeX
@incollection{tawiah2013summary,
author = {Tawiah, E.O. and Codjoe, S.N.A. and Anarfi, J.K. and Fayorsey, C.K.},
editor = {Ghana Statistical Service},
title = {Summary, conclusion and recommendations},
booktitle = {2010 Population and Housing Census. National Analytical Report},
year = {2013},
pages = {1--5},
publisher = {Ghana Statistical Services}
}