South Africa – Child Poverty

Between August 2005 and September 2006 Statistics South Africa undertook the IES 2005 to gather data on the income sources and expenditure patterns of a nationally representative sample of 21 144 households. This type of survey is usually conducted every five years.

Child poverty in South Africa is a case that really needs to be addressed. A lot of people think that this is still linked to apartheid, but that is certainly not the case. What is quite sad is that people are under the assumption that there is nothing wrong at all so the country tries to hide the situation away under the covers as if there were nothing to worry about.

  • Released for analysis early in 2008, IES 2005 is the most upto- date national level data source for measuring poverty in South Africa.
  • Whilst IES 2005 had been used before to provide an updated profile of poverty in South Africa it had not been used to analyse child poverty.

Before the FIFA Soccer World cup came to the country people were wondering what was going to become of the situation with child poverty and poverty in South Africa in general. A few days before the event took place children were taken off the street mysteriously.

Poverty was conceptualised in narrow resource deprivation terms and measured in money terms using the IES income data. The per capita income, which is calculated by dividing household income by the number of individuals in the household, was used as the Adult Equivalence Scale (AES) to convert household income into individual income and an indicator of welfare for ranking individuals from poorest to richest.

Tourists come to Africa not knowing the situation, but the poverty statistics show us how bad things really are. It is a little like a catch-22 scenario because parents don’t have the funds to send their children to school to improve their way of life and give them an education so they are stuck on the street, most of the time begging to pass the day.

The poverty line was set at the poorest 40% of household per capita income in IES 2005, which amounted to a R4 560 per capita per annum in 2000 Rand values. We estimated child poverty headcount (i.e. the percentage of children below the poverty line) for South Africa as whole and explored variations in the child poverty headcount by age, racial classification, gender and racial classification.

Slowly, people are being made aware of the situation. Volunteers have been building houses in the townships out of funds that they provide. It is fantastic that people have the heart for a cause like this, but it would be great if more people were aware of life on the streets. When you have a look at mansions overlooking the ocean it really makes you stop and think.

The poverty rate was found to be highest among children in the youngest age group of 0-4, followed by children aged 5-14 and then by those aged 15-17. This is surprising in view of the fact that the child support grants did not, at the time of the survey, extend to the oldest group, so one would have expected households containing only older children to perhaps experience more poverty.

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Posted by Hannah
Dated: 25th November 2010
Filled Under: Uncategorized