South Africa Archives - Page 2 of 24

The potential of social grants expenditure to promote local economic development and job creation

South Africa’s publicly funded social safety net, which consists of multiple conditional cash grants, has expanded considerably since a child support grant was added to the old age pensions and disability grants in 2002. Jacobs et al draw together local and global evidence on the developmental potential of social grants, including a typology of social…

Policy Options to Leverage the System of Social Grants for Improved Access to Economic Opportunity

The distribution of social grants in South Africa expanded considerably between 2001 and 2007. However, in a context of high unemployment, there is concern that unemployed household members depend on grants that are meant to target children, the aged or disabled. Thus grants are spread thinly, dramatically reducing their contribution to the intended beneficiaries. Moreover,…

Social floor and a decent standard of living

Homelessness on the streets has been of concern to governments and civil society for hundreds of years, and the number of homeless tends to rise when economic conditions take an adverse turn. Laying stress on questions of access to housing, livelihoods and services, this paper compares the historical causes of homelessness in Britain and Europe,…

Skeletons at the Feast? A review of the Homelessness Question in SA and Other World Regions.

Towards identifying the causes of South Africa’s street homelessness: Some policy recommendations

The Human Sciences Research Council’s four-year study of street homelessness in South Africa highlights the way unemployment stresses poor households and sets in motion processes of exclusion, and suggests that the social wage safety net is not protecting the street homeless. Although subsidised housing and social grants seem to head off homelessness in many cases,…

Social Income in South Africa, An Economy Marred by High Unemployment, Poverty and Extreme Inequality

Disagreements about the severity of poverty and inequality in South Africa have stimulated debate on the social wage. Given extreme measurement difficulties, not much reliance can be placed on existing attempts to value the social wage. This paper proposes that income poverty measures be augmented to consider the impact of social spending on disposable income….

Determinants of Income Mobility and Household Poverty Dynamics in South Africa

This article analyses household income mobility among Africans in South Africa’s most populous province, KwaZulu-Natal, between 1993 and 1998. Compared to industrialised and most developing countries, mobility has been quite high, as might have been expected after the transition in South Africa. This finding is robust when measurement error is controlled for. When disaggregating the…

Horizon Scanning in South Africa: Health and HIV and AIDS

South Africa has a mature HIV and AIDS epidemic, with 11% of the population having been infected. A review of possible scenarios provides insight into the outlook towards 2030. The Live the Future scenarios discussed here were based on two sets of branching points – who has the power, and what their goals are. Summer…

The Impact of HIV/AIDS on the Health Sector. National Survey of Health Personnel, Ambulatory and Hospital Patients and Health Facilities

Studies on HIV prevalence among health workers usually focus on occupational exposure to HIV, but little is known about the overall prevalence of HIV in this group. The aim of this study is to determine HIV prevalence among South African health workers. A stratified cluster sample was drawn of 5% of health facilities representative of…