The government of Ghana and private individuals have been proactive in mitigating poverty since the closing years of the twentieth century. Government and private efforts have been pro-woman and provide a lens through which to gauge the effectiveness of such efforts in curbing the poverty of old, illiterate rural women. This chapter examines three government poverty-mitigating strategies, namely the Interstate Succession Law, the national health insurance scheme (NHIS), and the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty program (LEAP). In addition to government programs, the chapter examines Single Parenting, a program organized by the Jill Foundation that supports destitute rural residents in the Ashanti Region. A central question the chapter analyzes is why, in the face of sustained efforts at alleviation, poverty levels have remained high in rural areas. Related to the question, it is important to ask whether the failure of poverty-alleviating efforts is a matter of framing, targeting, or a combination of both. Framing is used here to mean the government’s ability to predict what causes rural poverty and the nuances of such causation, and targeting refers to the government’s ability to identify vulnerable demographics in most need of assistance and then actually offering the help they need to move them out of poverty. The chapter argues that while framing and targeting are mutually reinforcing, the government has not approached them synergistically and therefore has fallen short in its commitment to lift elderly poor women in rural areas out of poverty.