The Ghana Statistical Service has revealed that 39.4 percent (824,797) of persons 5 years and older with difficulty in performing activities have never attended school compared to 18.7 percent for that of persons without difficulty.

According to the GSS statistics, about 40,838 persons with difficulty in performing activities who have never attended school are of school-going age (5 to 17 years), with an additional 10,668 children aged 5 to 17 with difficulty in performing activities attending school in the past.

Difficulty in performing activities refers to having some level of difficulty or a lot of difficulty in performing the activity, or cannot perform the activity at all in at least one of the following domains: sight, hearing, physical (walking or climbing stairs), intellectual (remembering or concentrating), self-care, and speech.

Furthermore, almost a million (929,501) persons 61 years and older with difficulty in performing activities are illiterate i.e. cannot read or write with understanding in any language.

This figure represents almost (44.8%) of that population group compared to a quarter (25.3%) for persons without difficulty.

Nationally, there are 29,593 children aged 5-17 years with difficulty in performing activities who are orphans i.e. have lost one or both parents.

The percentage of orphans with difficulty in performing activities who have never attended school (16.7%) is almost twice the percentage of children without difficulty (8.9%) while 28.8 percent of orphans with difficulty are illiterate relative to 20.8 percent of those without difficulty.

More than one-third (33.1 %) of persons with difficulty in performing activities are multidimensionally poor relative to 29.1 percent of persons without difficulty.

Three-quarters (76.4%) of multidimensionally poor persons with difficulty in performing activities are in rural areas.

Among persons 15 years and older with difficulty in performing activities that are employed, seven in every ten (70.9%) are self-employed without employee(s) compared to five in every 10 (55.6%) of those without difficulty.

The Ghana Statistical Service released these statistics on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities which is commemorated annually on December 3.

An earlier publication, the 2021 PHC General Report Volume 3F on Difficulty in Performing Activities was released in December 2021 and is available to download from www.census2021.statsghana.gov.gh