PThe Government should invest massively in improving road infrastructure to accelerate national development, a new study has suggested.
Titled Economics and its impacts on policy interventions to reduce burdens of unpaid activities,” the study also emphasised the need to expand early child education in the country.
The study conducted by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College (LEIBC) in New York in collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), with focus on Ghana and Tanzania sought to investigate the costs and benefits of policies that can lower time requirements for household production and thereby alleviate the impoverishing effects of time deficits.
A Senior Scholar of LEIBC, Mr Ajit Zacharias, who presented an overview of the study said road improvements and the expansion of ECE had positive effects on the overall economic development and human welfare of the country.
He explained that access to improved roads “bind the consumption of time deficits and reduced maternal deaths among others.”
Mr Zacharias explained that the modelling of the ECE policy would directly and indirectly create jobs as the expansion would positively raise employment rate of women, reduce gender pay disparity, and lower the rate of income poverty as well as diminish the degree of income inequality.
The expansion of ECE, he said, would better the cognitive outcomes and socialisation of the children and urged government as well as the private sector to refocus and reorder its priorities and provide resources to develop the citizens.
The Government Statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim, said in developing policies there was the need to ensure its benefits and sustainability in the long term.
Commending the LEIBC, he said the activities of the Institute were in line with the mandate of the service to better the welfare of the citizenry.
