Family Size and Rural Poverty -in the Kwahu South District in Ghana

Abstract

Rural Poverty is one of the greatest social problems confronting the world today. The problem is more pronounced in the developing countries. Ghana is no exception to this global problem of rural poverty. Ghana as a nation has adopted a lot of measures to address poverty. From the early 1980's to 2002, the country has seen Economic Recovery Programme Structural Adjustment Programme, Vision 2020 and Emergency Social Relief Fund just to alleviate poverty. But a little has been achieved in this direction. It is believed that the rate of population growth (large family size) is thwarting the efforts at alleviating poverty. It was therefore the aim of the study to establish the impact of large family size on the socio- economic well being of the rural people. It was identify that large families were unable to provide adequately the social and economic needs of their members (example education and health), high level of consumption resulting in no savings and investment due to high dependency ratios and inadequate access to land to increase production, hence most rural large families are poor. (IFE PsychologIA: 2003 11 (1): 23-35)