Background of GNHR
To identify the poor and vulnerable, most social protection programmes use a targeting method. Effective targeting of the poor and vulnerable is, therefore, a prerequisite for an efficient social protection system. It ensures that a larger share of benefits of social programmes go to the poorest and the most vulnerable.
The numerous social protection programmes currently being implemented in Ghana employ variety of methods to target the poor and vulnerable. These methods include poverty/ geographical ranking, Proxy Means Testing (PMT), categorical and community based targeting. In an attempt to streamline the targeting system in the country, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP) received funding from the World Bank to establish the Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR) to provide a common targeting mechanism that can assist social protection programmes identify, prioritize, and select households living in vulnerable conditions to ensure that different social programmes effectively reach them.
The GNHR involves registering of households and collecting basic information on their socioeconomic status by administering a data intake questionnaire to each household. Since its establishment in August 2016, the GNHR project unit has put in place systems and delivery mechanisms that ensured the successful implementation of the project in the Upper West,Upper East, Northern, savannah and North East Regions of Ghana..
The registry has also successfully established the necessary institutional systems and policy regimes that can be leveraged on to scale up the project across the country.Data collection activities are currently ongoing in the Central, Volta and Oti Regions.
- Compile a credible database of the poor and vulnerable in Ghana to make it easy for Social Protection programmes to identify their target beneficiaries.
- Increase transparency and accountability in targeting of the beneficiaries of Social Protection Programmes in Ghana
- Support inter-institutional coordination to improve the impact of social spending and the elimination of duplication in targeting the beneficiaries of social protection progrmmes by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and other institutions in the Country.
- Increase the knowledge on issues around poverty and vulnerability
- Allow the development of accurate socioeconomic analyses on poverty to support the design and development of specific policies and programmes targeted at the vulnerable and/or people of low-income sectors.
- Ensure easier transition of beneficiaries between social protection programmes
- Contribute to the institutional strengthening of MoGCSP, through the implementation of a reliable and modern system of social information.