Purpose – This paper's purpose is to examine the nature and correlates of poverty in Ghana.

Design/methodology/approach – Using the most recently published household living standards survey; the paper computes poverty indicators using the Foster et al., and Theil's inequality indicators to examine the nature of poverty. It also does a qualitative analysis on the nature of poverty by examining access to social amenities by households. Finally, based on standard empirical literature the paper runs an ordinary least squares and a probit regression to determine the correlates of poverty.

Findings – Most households rely on wood fuel, do not have access to tap water and live in rooms rather than full apartments. Expenditure inequality is high and greater in the rural areas compared to the urban areas. Inequality within locations appears to be the main source of national inequality. A household is less likely to be poor if the head is educated, as well as if the household is urban based. Again, households with heads employed in the clerical, sales, services, and agricultural sectors are more likely to be poor compared with those employed in the administrative and managerial sectors.

Research limitations/implications – The paper is based on a static analysis of poverty; the absence of a panel household survey makes it difficult to examine the dynamics of poverty.

Originality/value – This paper provides a comprehensive and holistic examination of the nature of poverty in Ghana. It looks at poverty within various sectors of an economy by simultaneously examining the issues both from quantitative and qualitative perspectives