Consequences of permanent lay - off from civil service : results from a survey of retrenched workers in Ghana

In 1991, the Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program conducted a survey to determine the effects of this redeployment in terms of income, consumption, labor force participation, migration patterns, and other socioeconomic variables. Results of that survey show that the fear of unemployment was exaggerated: the majority of redeployees worked without interruption after leaving government service, in part because they continued in moonlighting jobs they already had. Further, a significant number chose to migrate from urban to rural areas, and most of these are now farming. On the negative side, redeployees" household income is somewhat lower than the general population, and a substantial number are poor by any standard; from a social welfare perspective, further benefits to redeployees should focus on those who are farming. Non-farm income, on the other hand, is higher than average, and self-employed redeployees are earning average incomes, even though few received any training or assistance (except for severance pay). Finally, redeployees devoted a significant amount of their severance pay -- which all donors refused to finance, even though the alternatives they offered have produced few results -- to savings, and much of that has been used for physical investments in self-employment enterprises.