Why Poverty Social Impact Analysis (PSIA)?
The record for addressing poverty in developing countries is not good. This is partly attributed to poorly designed policies which do not consider how poor people will be affected and which are not country specific. PSIA involves examining the potential impacts, especially on poor and vulnerable people, of future reform policies and has the potential to lead to a more open and informed policy process for choosing reform paths which will have the best impact on poverty reduction. This choice should be made based on an open debate about quality analysis of different policy options which considers the varying impacts of those options on poor and vulnerable groups. Ghana has undertaken five PSIAs of different sectors under reform since 2003. The impetus for PSIA in Ghana arose from the development of the monitoring and evaluation framework for the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) which outlined a strategy for monitoring policies with a potential for worsening poverty in the country.
