A recent report has revealed that borrowing from friends and family was the most frequent coping strategy to survive in 2021.
According to the the Ghana Statistical Service report on the COVID-19 Households and Jobs Tracker Wave 3, “approximately eighty-seven percent (86.7%) of households used some sort of coping strategy to deal with the negative effects of COVID-19 since March 2020”.
Out of a host of survival mechanisms such as reliance on savings, reduction in food consumption and receiving assistance from friends and relatives, the GSS pointed out that “Borrowing became more frequent coping strategies in 2021”.
A further breakdown indicated that 8.4% of respondents relied on borrowing from March 2020 to December 2020, while 7.9& borrowed between January 2021 to July 2021.
Other more common coping strategies included relying on savings, which was pegged at 43.0% while a reduction in food consumption stood at 42.9%.
Respondents reported that most types of coping strategies were used more often in 2020 than in 2021 with the exception to this being the borrowing of friends and family and the use of credited purchases.
When asked about change in income levels only 26.7% of respondents indicated that their total household income stayed the same as compared to the period before COVID-19 (March 16, 2020).
“5.1% of respondents indicated that their total income increased, while 68.2% indicated that their household income decreased”.
