The study examines the nexus between social protection policies and child labor from a gender-sensitive perspective in Ghana, a developing country context.
Using a phenomenological lens within the qualitative approach, 23 participants were purposively sampled from even low-income communities across four regions of Ghana for in-depth interviews.
Results reveal that Ghana's social protection policies mitigated household vulnerabilities to some extent but remain insufficient to prevent child labour, particularly in low-income communities. Evidence across four emerging themes suggests that social protection policies have partial, gendered, and constrained effects, reinforcing rather than transforming household survival strategies.
While the design of the study does not permit statistical generalizability, evidence adduced implies that social protection programmes operate as a partial buffer within conditions of chronic risk, where families rationally balance schooling aspirations against survival imperatives.
This study provides context-specific evidence regarding how social protection policies affect child labour from a gender-sensitivity lens from non-Western country context.
