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South African student retention during 2020: Evidence from system wide higher education institutional data
No full textUsing longitudinal, institutional data we document the impact of COVID-19 on undergraduate student retention at public universities in South Africa. We find that student dropout increased in 2020 for students in 3-5th year, with little evidence of a change for those entering their second year of study. These aggregate findings mask significant differences across institutions. Students enrolled in most historically advantaged traditional institutions, and some comprehensive institutions, were not significantly affected, whereas dropout increased significantly at the University of Fort Hare, Walter Sisulu University and the University of Venda, three historically disadvantaged institutions located in rural areas. No difference in retention is found, however, for students enrolled at the University of Zululand (UZ) or the University of Limpopo (UL), equally resource-disadvantaged institutions where a majority (over 90%) of students are funded via the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS). Furthermore, at institutions where dropout increased, NSFAS-funded students were less impacted than their unfunded peers.
Our overall findings accord with growing evidence that COVID-19-related changes in the sector differentially impacted students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. However, they also illustrate that the NSFAS bursary appears to have provided a social safety net during this time. Finally, the example of UZ and the UL provide suggestive evidence that institutional relational aspects are important too. Together, these results foreground the complex interplay of factors impacting a students decision to drop out of or remain in university, highlighting that institutional responses and/or relational context during a crisis like COVID-19 can positively impact student retention.Classification codes: I24, I22, I23This research was made possible by a grant from the Spencer Foundation (grant number 202100035). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Spencer Foundation
Trends in household headship and living alone in South Africa, 1995-2011
No full textIn South Africa, households were formed at about twice the rate that the population grew between census 1996 and census 2011 and the number of single-person households ballooned by 150%. In this paper, I describe trends in household formation and living alone between 1995 and 2011, made possible by prior work to address data quality concerns in the household survey data I use. I use household heads as a proxy for household formers since I have one head per household in my data. In South Africa’s patriarchal context, household headship is probably a more reliable proxy for these purposes than it may be in other contexts. I show a surge in household formation in the late 90s was driven by prime-aged and older women and Black African men and likely connected to new freedoms afforded to these groups after the transition to democracy. Household formation then steadied in the 2000s, hiding variation in who formed what types of households. Astonishing growth in the rate at which South Africans live alone was led by Black African men, a group historically associated with circular labour migration. Women instead are heading up complex households including children. More households only consist of adults of a single sex, mainly because more households are singleperson. These changes seem tied up with long-term marital decline. By 2011, most female heads were never-married; most people living alone were never-married; and the growing majority population group of never-married adults persistently increased their propensity to form households over this period
Demographic Challenges for Global Labor Markets in the 21st Century, Africa in a Changing World
No full textThe world is projected to add 2.5 billion people to the total population and 1.1 billion people to the working-age population between 2020 and 2100. Almost all of the additional working-age people will be added in Sub-Saharan Africa, a dramatic change from previous decades, when the growth of the working-age population was concentrated in Asia. This chapter analyzes the demography of the African labor force in the coming decades using the latest United Nations population projections. We show that by 2050 Africa will be the only region in the world with a growing working-age population and will be the only region in which the ratio of dependents to working-age population is falling. These dramatic differences are the result of Africa’s later and slower fertility decline, with fertility still high in many African countries. Being the only region with a growing working-age population may create opportunities for investment and economic growth in Africa. This growing working-age cohort and especially its females have higher years of schooling than any previous generation. But the quality of their education still lags other regions. On the demand side, Africa needs to produce 2 million jobs per month by 2040 to keep up with the growth of the working-age population. This rate of job creation is similar to that produced in Asia during the period in which its working-age population was growing at similar rates. Still, this remains a daunting challenge for Africa in the coming decades. The dominance of the informal sector in all African labor markets, with the exception of a few upper middle-income contexts, implies that formally measured unemployment rates are not likely to provide telling metrics of African success. Rather, the focus for growth and improved development outcomes has to be on formal sector job creation alongside notably stronger linkages into the informal sector than has been the case to this point.Prepared for: Task Force on Employment, The Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University
The authors acknowledge useful comments from participants in the IPD-JICA Conference on
Employment Prospects in Developing Countries: Implications of Technological and Demographic
Trends, at Columbia University, January 12-13, 2023, and also further comments from Arjun
Jayadev.
This is a joint SALDRU/ACEIR Working Pape
COVID-19 Vaccine Survey (CVACS) Survey 2 Key Findings: Policy Brief
No full textThe COVID-19 Vaccine Survey (CVACS) aims to collect high quality, timely information to inform the development of campaigns and programmes to improve COVID-19 vaccination uptake in South Africa. This policy brief provides an overview of the key findings based on a total sample of 3608 Survey 2 participants of CVACS
COVID-19 Vaccine Survey (CVACS) Survey 2 Key Findings: Slide Deck
No full textThe COVID-19 Vaccine Survey (CVACS) aims to collect high quality, timely information to inform the development of campaigns and programmes to improve COVID-19 vaccination uptake in South Africa. This slide deck contains findings based on Survey 2 of CVACS, which included 3608 unvaccinated respondent interviews and 386 vaccinated respondent interviews. The results in the slide deck have been adjusted using design weights for cross-sectional analysis and panel weights for longitudinal analysis
Measuring rural households and electricity access: A comparison of national census data and small-area health and demographic surveillance system (HDSS) data
No full textProgress on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires high quality measurement. Too few attempts are made to assess the accuracy of existing measurements and how it changes over time. We compare household counts and electrification rates for the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance Site (HDSS), as measured in the 1996, 2001 and 2011 national censuses and in the database of the HDSS. The household measurements in the two systems agree within a few percentage points in 2001 and 2011 but show much bigger divergences in 1996. The population counts also show impressive agreement, with perhaps some over-enumeration of older males in the national census. Overall, survey and census information seem to provide accurate measures of population access to electricity
COVID-19 Vaccine Survey (CVACS) Survey 1 Key Findings: Policy Brief
No full textThe COVID-19 Vaccine Survey (CVACS) aims to collect high quality, timely information to inform the development of campaigns and programmes to improve COVID-19 vaccination uptake in South Africa. This policy brief provides an overview of the key findings based on the full sample of 3521 Survey 1 participants of CVACS
Social stratification and post-school funding thresholds: A dynamic approach to profiling the missing middle
No full textQuestions related to the sustainability of post-school education funding in South Africa, together with issues of expanding access and affordability have been fervently debated over the last decade. In 2018, government announced that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme would fund all eligible post-school students whose household income was R350 000 or less. The Department of Higher Education and Training is now focusing on the “missing middle” – students who come from households whose income is too high to make the R350 000 funding threshold but too low to afford fees. If free education for all students is not viable, a funding instrument that differentiates students according to socio-economic need may be relevant.
Guided by the poverty dynamics literature, we argue that a key consideration for how we understand socio-economic need – on both sides of the funding threshold – should reflect the
household circumstances that generate economic vulnerability, not only household income at a given point in time. Income mobility is associated with measurable differences in household
characteristics that are related to economic vulnerability. In this paper, we conceptualise a stratification schema around the NSFAS funding threshold that is premised on mobility
patterns over time as well as current living standards. Household income mobility is estimated using a multivariate probit model that explicitly accounts for endogeneity of initial conditions, unobserved heterogeneity, and non-random panel attrition. Recognising that the majority of post-school enrolment occurs among youth, we then situate this group within our stratification schema. In doing so, we provide a novel input to current discussions about the design of a sustainable, comprehensive, and progressive financial aid scheme.This work forms part of Emma Whitelaw’s PhD thesis. The authors acknowledge support from the National Research Fund [NRF] Chair in Poverty and Inequality Research. Opinions expressed, and conclusions arrived at, are those of the authors and cannot necessarily be attributed to the NRF
CVACS Survey 1 Key Findings
No full textThe COVID-19 Vaccine Survey (CVACS) aims to collect high quality, timely information to inform the development of campaigns and programmes to improve COVID-19 vaccination uptake in South Africa. This slide deck contains findings based on the full sample of 3521 Survey 1 participants of CVACS, and thus updates the Preliminary findings from the CVACS Survey 1 (based on the first 2000 interviews from Survey 1) which were released in a webinar on 14 December 2021. The results in the slide deck have been adjusted using survey weights
The Evolution of Household Transport Spending in Post-Apartheid South Africa: 1995-2015
No full textThis paper uses nationally representative household survey data to examine changes in household transport expenditure in South Africa from 1995 to 2015. These data show a dramatic increase in transport expenditure, in both absolute terms and as a share of total expenditure, across all groups within the sample. By 2015, almost half of South African households allocated more than 10% of total expenditure towards transport. Black, Coloured and lower-quintile South African households experienced the largest increases in transport expenditure share over time. We undertake simple Engel curve analysis, to estimate expenditure elasticities for overall transport spending as well as for public and private transport.This paper is a revised version of Adrienne Sutherland’s UCT honours economics long paper submitted in 2020, supervised by Andrew Kerr