Abstract

This research paper aims to understand the effects of time spent in domestic work, including childcare, on women’s mental health in Ghana. The paper adopted a triangulation convergence mixed methods approach. The quantitative information was sourced from two waves (2009/ 2014) of the Ghana Socioeconomic Panel Survey (GSEPS) while qualitative information was obtained from in-depth interviews with couples and key informants from five (5) regions, representing diverse ethnic backgrounds, in Ghana.

The tradeoff that women face between work and family depends largely on a country’s institutional settings. Provisions like stable employment, maternity benefits, and childcare services can affect women’s fertility behaviours. In Ghana, the majority of women work in vulnerable self-employment positions. Among paid female employees, the degree of job security also varies. Largely studied in the developed country context, job insecurity has been found to have important effects on women’s reproductive health outcomes. As yet, there is no consensus on the direction of effects.

Highlights

Until recently, women have not been seen as having the potential for entrepreneurial success. Yet women’s engagement in the energy sector could substantially improve energy access for those most underserved. This article examines the role of women as energy entrepreneurs from the perspective of gender inequality within the energy industry.

This work explores the consequences that different energy poverty definitions and measures might have for the identification of  the  energy poor. Using the  2017 National Survey of  Public Energy Perception applied to  a sample of 3,500 households in Chile, we compare the respective identification outcomes of applying the ten percent rule index (TPRI) and our proposed Perception-based Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (PMEPI) against the monetary poverty identification outcome.

Chilean mining municipalities collect a mineral tax to compensate for the negative externalities associated with resource extraction. Although this implies a positive marginal impact on local finance, there is not enough empirical evidence to support that this improves the quality of life in these communities. This article attempts to bridge this knowledge gap via a unique experimental framework, specifically, the Chilean tax system and a mining law that allows certain municipalities above an exogenous threshold to keep the extra income.

Literature on the resource curse argues that resource windfalls, such as those resulting from a commodity price boom, crowd out several determinants of long-term fiscal income (Papyrakis and Gerlagh, 2006). Although empirical literature tests this theory at an intercountry context, similar attention has not been paid to that of subnational governments. This different type of spatial scope would reveal how low-tier governments strategically behave in regard to resource windfalls and covering local costs.