Abstract
Children have been shown to be one of the most economically vulnerable groups within the South African context. We examine and decompose the dynamics of child poverty in South Africa over the period 2008–2012 in order to arrive at a better understanding of the nature and causes of child poverty, and specifically persistent poverty over time. We use the framework of an asset poverty line first developed by Carter and May (World Development, 29(12), 1987–2006, 2001) and longitudinal data from the National Income Dynamics Study in order to identify those children in households that are in structural poverty with an asset base which is too low to escape poverty in the long run. We find that almost 40 % of the children in our sample found themselves in this structural poverty trap between 2008 and 2012. As expected, these children have suffered as a result of this deprivation, even in comparison to their peers who have also been poor over the period, but were living in households with access to more assets. We conduct some preliminary investigations into the potential causes of welfare changes over time. In line with previous work on the topic, we identify low initial levels of education, low asset-holdings, low initial employment and adverse household formation as possible causes of these poverty traps.
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Notes
A poverty trap can be defined as “any self-reinforcing mechanism which causes poverty to persist” (Azariadis and Starchurski 2005).
This idea is sometimes conveyed in the nomenclature ‘predistribution’.
Using data from the General Household Survey (GHS). It should be noted that the GHS does not contain full income or expenditure data, so that these estimates are, even at the quite high poverty lines drawn, somewhat over-stated. However, it is likely that the change over time referred to below broadly reflects the underlying trend that would have been obtained if more complete data and other poverty lines were used.
This is an inflation adjustment of the unofficial but commonly used lower bound poverty line proposed by Özler (2007).
These are the PSLSD, the Income and Expenditure Survey (IES) for 2000 and the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) for 2008.
Residents were identified as all individuals who usually resided at the dwelling for at least four nights a week.
For a more in-depth discussion on the nature of the attrition in the sample, please refer to the working paper version of this paper, available at http://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2015/wp052015.
It should be noted that the estimations in this paper use the imputed income and expenditure values included in the NIDS data.
Of course the child’s poverty status is inextricably linked to that of the household she lives in.
Although there has been some preliminary findings more recently by Posel and Rogan (2014), who have shown how the use of adult equivalence scales may improve the measurement of poverty and indeed narrow the gap between objective and subjective (perceived poverty), we have decided against the use of adult equivalence scales here.
We have deflated all prices in the NIDS panel to reflect August 2010 prices.
In order to avoid losing the zero values when we log the index, we add R1 to the income of households who recorded a R0 income.
A control suggested by May and Woolard (2007).
Since there were many households who responded in the affirmative to this question, we only code it as being equal to one if the dwelling is a formal house with brick walls.
In 2008, we lose 3.80 % of the 2008 sample of children and in 2012, we lose 3.23 % of the 2012 sample of children.
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Acknowledgments
This work originated from a project conducted for the South African Human Rights Commission on behalf of United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in South Africa. The authors would like to acknowledge funding and input from UNICEF South Africa. The authors would like to thank Alejandro Grinspun for his input and comments, as well as participants at the 5th Conference of the International Society for Child Indicators held on 2–4 September 2015 in Cape Town, South Africa.
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von Fintel, M., Zoch, A. & van der Berg, S. The Dynamics of Child Poverty in South Africa Between 2008 and 2012. Child Ind Res 10, 945–969 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-016-9393-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-016-9393-z