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Health, Health Seeking Behavior, and Health Care
No full textHealth status and socioeconomic status are important determinants of individuals’ wellbeing. Information on income alone, or on health alone, provides a less complete picture. Better health can lead to higher income, and higher income can lead to better health, so that we cannot fully understand the dynamics of either process without understanding both. Much of the research on international health and income has focused on the cross-country relationships between population health and national income. Starting from Preston (1975, 1980), these relationships have been used to investigate the causes of mortality decline, particularly the relative roles of income and of medical knowledge. And data on adult height have been used to investigate the causes of the historical decline in mortality, see in particular Fogel (1997, 2004), Floud, Wachter, and Gregory (1990), and Steckel (1995). The Commission for Macroeconomics and Health (2001) used the same data to argue that it is health care, through its effect on health status, that is an important engine of economic growth. Another strand of research, particula rly associated with Sen (see for example Sen 1999), and embodied in UNDPs Human Development Index, argues that comparisons of wellbeing must look at health (and education) together with income. Until relatively recently, surveys that collected information on income rarely collected comprehensive information on health, while most standardized health surveys, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) being the most notable examples, contained at best rudimentary and unsatisfactory information on economic status. The National Income Dynamics Study would be an ideal vehicle to understand the joint determination of economic status and health status in South Africa
Intra-Household Decision-Making and Resource Allocation, Social Networks and Social Cohesion
No full textThe household is central to most policy initiatives aimed at reducing poverty, since it has long been thought that this is the most efficient way to transfer income and other resources towards those in need. Indeed, the household provides an important entry point for analysing poverty and inequality, since an individual's life chances are critically affected both by the material resources at the disposal of the household as well as the decisions made within the household concerning how those resources should be distributed. A key question is whether real households really operate the way they are meant to in the ArrowDebreu world and what implications this has for policy interventions aimed at changing the behaviour of individuals within these targeted households. Moreover, since households do not exist in isolation nor do they emerge out of thin air, it also becomes important to look at dynastic (or intergenerational) influences on families' outcomes, as well as the role of social networks
Questions on Demography for the National Income Dynamic Study
No full textThis briefing paper sets out proposed questions for the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) that will ensure that the study will be able to answer questions relating to the intersection between demographic variables and the key foci of NIDS. The questions proposed have been selected for their relevance to the overarching goals of NIDS, and hence – while limited in number – are all regarded as highly important. Justifications for the inclusion of each question are provided. In addition to the suggested questions for inclusion, we discuss the merits of including a birth history module (and how to maintain it in subsequent rounds); a retrospective death module; as well as the utility (or otherwise) of using information from Road to Health Cards
Utilisation of Commonages for Sustainable Tourism Opportunities for the Poor in Namaqualand, South Africa
No full textThis paper investigates the impact of livestock farming on rural livelihoods on redistributed commonage land in Namaqualand post-1994. The paper contends that farming has been declining for decades, where its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has declined from 10% in the 1970s to about 3.5% in 2005, resulting in the loss of up to 400 000 jobs in the sector. The findings suggest that commonage users are barely able to sustain themselves from cash earnings gained from livestock farming and that there have been no visible improvements in terms of their quality of life e.g. improved housing or ability to educate their children. The findings further illustrate that while livestock farming is the only known and practiced means of livelihood available to most people in Namaqualand because of the arid climate and poor crop farming conditions, commonage users are receptive to alternatives to traditional farming such as sustainable tourism. In order to make a case for sustainable tourism, the study has investigated a sustainable tourism venture in the Richtersveld, Namaqualand. The study has found that the venture has provided both economic spin-offs (job opportunities, infrastructure development and increased spending by tourists in the area) as well as social (reduced unemployment, reduced alcoholism, increased capacity and skills and engagement of the youth in meaningful job creation). In view of the findings from the commonage case studies and the Richtersveld sustainable tourism venture, the study proposes that South Africa"s land reform strategy should offer other sustainable development options such as tourism as an alternative to rural people
What was the poverty headcount in 2004 and how does it compare to recent estimates by van der Berg et al?
No full textThe South African labour market 1995-2004: A cohort analysis
No full textThis paper constructs a ‘synthetic panel’ from successive years of the October Household Surveys and Labour Force Surveys, and shows that new insights into the South African labour market are revealed when groups of individuals, defined by their date of birth, are followed from 1995 to 2004. Three main features of the South African labour market post-95 are highlighted. First, the age at which young Africans become economically active, i.e. transit from school into the labour force, is continually declining. Second, this increasing supply of labour to the market is not being absorbed into employment resulting in a growing pool of unemployed youth. Third, the proportion of the population employed is extremely stable over the ten-year period for all ages. These findings have implications for the future
focus of labour policy as rising unemployment is primarily a consequence of increased youth participation and not due to a decline in the availability of jobs
Employment status, security, and the management of risk: a study of workers in Kwamsane, KwaZulu-Natal
No full textThe study investigates the concept of security in relationship to work and employment. Work has conventionally been seen as the pathway to economic security; however, the growth in the numbers of people in the informal economy and in atypical forms of formal work has led to work being a source of risk and vulnerability for some categories of workers. We propose that security has separate components: income, health, education, employment and skill reproduction, place of work, demand, capital, and the ability to manage risk. We use eighteen indicators for the wage employed and six for the self-employed to estimate the extent of formality of employment, and use these to assess the components of work-related security for those in different employment statuses. This framework was applied to data collected in Kwamsane, KwaZulu-Natal in 2003. As expected, the self-employed were generally more vulnerable than those in wage employment, and there was clear gender segmentation in the labour market. However, differentiating the wage employed into three clusters based on the degree of formality of their employment revealed a more complex and nuanced picture
Migration and remittances in South Africa
No full textMigration, at the broadest level, involves the movement of individuals over space and the change of an individual's place of residence. This general definition encompasses many different kinds of migration. Migration may be involuntary, where individuals or households are forced to move (for example, in response to forced removals or evictions) or it may voluntary, here people "choose" to move. Migration may be internal, where people move within the country, or it may be international with people changing their country of residence. Migration may also be permanent because it implies a permanent change of residency, or it may be temporary in that migrants retain membership in their household (or country) of origin, to which they expect to return at some point in the future
Measuring recent changes in South African inequality and poverty using 1996 and 2001 census data
No full textThe paper analyses poverty and inequality changes in South Africa for the period 1996 to 2001 using Census data. To gain a broader picture of wellbeing in South Africa, both income-based and access-based measurement approaches are employed. At the national level, findings from the income-based approach show that inequality has unambiguously increased from 1996 to 2001. As regards population group inequality, within-group inequality has increased; while between-group inequality has decreased (inequality has also increased in each province and across the rural/urban divide). The poverty analysis reveals that poverty has worsened in the nation, particularly for Africans. Provincially, the Eastern Cape and Limpopo have the highest poverty rates while the Western Cape and Gauteng have the lowest poverty rates. Poverty differs across the urban-rural divide with rural areas being relatively worse off than urban areas. However, due to the large extent of rural-urban migration, the proportion of the poor in rural areas is declining. The access-based approach focuses on type of dwelling, access to water, energy for lighting, energy for cooking, sanitation and refuse removal. The data reveal significant improvements in these access measures between 1996 and 2001. The proportion of households occupying traditional dwellings has decreased while the proportion of households occupying formal dwellings has risen slightly (approximately two-thirds of households occupy formal dwellings). Access to basic services has improved, especially with regard to access to electricity for lighting and access to telephones. On a provincial level, Limpopo and the Eastern Cape display the poorest performance in terms of access to basic services. The paper concludes by contrasting the measured changes in well being that emerge from the income and access approaches. While income measures show worsening well being via increases in income poverty and inequality, access measures show that well being in South Africa has improved in a number of important dimensions
Labour force withdrawal of the elderly in South Africa
No full textThis paper analyses labour market behaviour of the elderly in South Africa,
focusing on the Black/African population group. The analysis uses data from the
2001 census and 1996 census, the Labour Force Surveys for September 2000
and 2001, and the Income and Expenditure Survey for 2000. Findings show that
participation rates fall fairly rapidly after age 45, with particularly sharp
declines in both participation and work at the age of eligibility for the old-age
pension. Measures of unused productive capacity demonstrate that South
Africa’s age profile of labour force withdrawal compares favourably with some
OECD countries. The hazard rate indicates that the age of pension eligibility is
associated with increased rates of retirement. The paper also examines major
determinants of elderly labour supply, including household structure and
marital status, public and private pensions and schooling and, finally, calculates
probit regressions to gain a clearer picture of the variables affecting the work
activity of the elderly