921 research outputs found
Sort by
The Links Between Migration, Poverty and Health: Evidence From Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plain
No full textIn the mid-1950s, the City of Cape Town was part of a wider area demarcated as a Coloured Labour Preference Area. The free movement of African people into the city was strictly controlled and the residential areas were segregated along racial lines. In terms of Apartheid's grand design, an area designated Mitchell's Plain was demarcated for occupation by Coloured people in 1973 while another designated Khayelitsha was allocated for African people. The two areas were incorporated in one magisterial district, Mitchell's Plain, in the mid-1980s. A sample survey of the area was conducted in late November and early December 2000 with a focus on labour market issues. Its aim was to capture occupants of households aged 18 or older. The survey data has been interrogated to describe the connections between migration, poverty and health in a city where recent rapid urbanisation is changing the demographic profile significantly. As a consequence, the need to provide adequate infrastructure, decent housing and employment poses a daunting challenge ten years after the new democracy has been ushered in.We are deeply indebted to Matthew Welch, deputy-director of the Data First Resource Unit, for so diligently creating the database from the Khayelitsha/Mitchell’s Plain Survey as well as assisting with coding and recoding of certain responses and providing seemingly endless tabulations to enable us to verify the coding which occurred. We acknowledge too the sterling efforts of Jolene Skordis in cutting the initial tables and validating the database as well as Virgulino Nhate who successfully completed his Honours degree in Economics at the University
of Cape Town in 2003 and upon whose honours thesis we have drawn extensively although we
have used a later version of the database and some alternative questions for analysis. We are
very grateful to Alison Siljeur for providing the maps and to Brenda Adams for formatting this
paper. Our thanks are also due to Lynn Woolfrey for bibliographical assistance. The Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation provided most generously the funds which enabled us to carry out this endeavour. The usual caveats apply
The mystery of South Africa's ghost workers in 1996: measurement and mismeasurement in the manufacturing census, population census and October Household Surveys
No full textThis paper compares estimates of total manufacturing employment from South Africa's 1996 manufacturing census, the 1996 population census and the October Household Surveys from 1995, 1996 and 1997. Findings show that there are 300 000 too few manufacturing workers recorded in the 1996 population census. Furthermore there are other inconsistencies between these data sources. Several possible explanations for the deficit in manufacturing workers are put forward, but none are compelling. It is concluded that aggregate employment series constructed from household surveys should be treated with caution.The assistance of the Data First Resource Unit, University of Cape Town, and in particular of Lynn Woolfrey and Matthew Welch, is gratefully acknowledged
The economy-wide impacts of the labour intensification of infrastructure expenditure in South Africa
No full textThis paper examines the performance of public works in addressing both micro and macroeconomic policy objectives relating to growth, employment and poverty reduction in South Africa. The microeconomic analysis suggests that while participation in a public works programme may contribute to a reduction in the depth of poverty, with improvements in participation in education and nutrition, and have positive psychosocial benefits, the impact of a short-term programme may not be significant in terms of a reduction in headcount poverty or improvements in asset ownership (material or financial). In this case the public works programme income may function essentially as a temporary wage shock, since the insurance function of the transfer is limited by the short duration of the employment period. From a macroeconomic perspective, a social accounting matrix (SAM) is used to estimate the impact of shifting R3 billion expenditure from machine to labour based infrastructure provision over a one year period. The SAM indicates that the impact would be to increase employment by 1%, the income of the poorest quintile by 2% (if employment were exclusively targeted to this group) and GDP by 0.1%. While these are positive outcomes, they are not significant in terms of South Africa's overall economic and employment performance. The conclusion is drawn that from both a macro and microeconomic perspective, there is reason to be cautious about the potential of a national public works programme based on shifting the labour intensity of infrastructure provision, and offering short-term employment opportunities, to have a significant impact on poverty, employment or growth.This paper was originally written as a conference paper for the DPRU, TIPS & Cornell Conference on African Development and Poverty Reduction, the Macro-Micro Linkages convened from 13 to 15 October 2004. It draws on research carried out in collaboration with Gary Taylor of IT Transport, funded by the UK Department of International Development (South Africa)
Public works: Policy expectations and programme realities
No full textThis paper explores the ability of public works programmes (PWPs) to promote employment and reduce poverty. Public works are a key component of the current social protection framework in South Africa, constituting the only significant form of social support for the able-bodied working age unemployed, and are ascribed considerable potential in terms of addressing the central challenges of unemployment and poverty. Despite this policy prominence, the targeting of public works programmes and their micro-economic and labour market impacts have not been studied systematically in South Africa, rendering evidence-based policy development in this area problematic. This paper attempts to provide some initial responses to these questions in order to establish an evidence base for future policy development, and to identify some of the key policy lessons arising, drawing evidence from two case studies, the Gundo Lashu programme in Limpopo, and the Zibambele programme in KwaZulu Natal. The paper also reviews the policy context, and the characterisation of the unemployment problem in the policy discourse. The paper concludes that while PWPs can offer a partial response to the problems of poverty and unemployment if appropriately designed, the gap between policy expectation and programme reality is significant, and that PWPs cannot offer an adequate social protection response to the growing problem of the working age poor. The paper asserts that there is a need to recognise that PWPs can have only a limited role in the context of entrenched and structural unemployment, and that supply-side interventions are of limited value in response to poverty and unemployment among the low-skilled, given ongoing structural shifts in the South African economy and the delinking of economic growth and employment.The survey was funded jointly by the UK Department for International Development, the KwaZulu Natal Department of Transport, the Roads Agency Limpopo, and SALDRU in the CSSR of the School of Economics at UCT. The survey was carried out under the auspices of the Public Works Research Project of SALDRU, in collaboration with the Roads Agency Limpopo, and the KwaZulu Natal Department of Transport, and implemented by Khanyisa Integrated Development and Social Research, and African Renaissance Development Consultants in Limpopo, and the Maurice Webb Race Relations Unit of the University of KwaZulu Natal in KwaZulu Natal. The author is grateful to the many Gundo Lashu and Zibambele workers and their families who participated in the survey work, and those who gave up their time to contribute to the
focus group discussions in Sekhukhune and Mankweng in Limpopo, and Eshowe and Mapumulo in KwaZulu Natal (see Annex 11 for a full listing of focus group participants). This paper is a shortened version of a paper published by the Overseas Development Institute, Policy Expectations and Programme Reality: The Poverty Reduction and Labour Market Impact of Two Public Works Programmes in South Africa. September 2004, ESAU Working Paper 8, London
Determinants of the choice of health care facility utilised by individuals in HIV/AIDS-affected households in the Free State province of South Africa
No full textThis paper analyses differences in the choice of health care facility by individuals in HIV/AIDS-affected households in the Free State province of South Africa. Illness is more prevalent and severe amongst poorer affected households. The probability that individuals seek private versus public health care conditional on individual and household specific socio-economic variables is investigated. Significant determinants of choice of health care facility are income, severity of illness, the burden of illness and death in the household, the number of people in the household with access to medical aid, and secondary education. The demand for private health care over public health care is sensitive to income, with those from the lowest income quintile on average being less likely to switch to private health care than those in the highest income quintile. The planned roll-out of anti-retroviral treatment in public health care facilities in South Africa therefore will be crucial in enabling infected persons from poor households access to treatment. The provision of free treatment at public facilities may also see health care shift from private to public providers in the longer term
Wages and wage elasticities for wine and table grapes in South Africa
No full textA survey of 190 wine and table grape farmers in the Western Cape puts the average wage for farm labour at R928 per month in 2003 and R1123 per month in 2004. Output per worker has doubled since 1983. On farms with grape harvesters, labour is 30 per cent more productive (48 ton/worker) than on farms where wine grapes are picked by hand (37 ton/worker). At 9.75 tons per worker, table grapes are four times as labour-intensive as wine grapes. Resident men dominate the workforce on wine farms, while the resident female workforce is 20 per cent larger than the resident male workforce on table grape farms. Seasonal workers contribute a third of labour in table grapes, and brokers less than ten per cent in either case. In a single-equation short-run Hicksian demand function, wage, output, capital levels and mechanisation intensities are highly significant determinants of employment. Higher wages decrease employment and larger output increases employment. More mechanisation, measured by the number of tractors used to produce a ton of fruit, raises labour intensity too. Grape harvesters could not be shown to reduce jobs. The ten per cent rise in the minimum wage planned for March 2005 could reduce employment by 3.3 per cent in the wine industry and 5.9 per cent in the table grape industry, but it is more likely that the wage increase will be offset against fewer benefits. The average expected impact is about the same as for all agriculture and manufacturing as a whole.This survey was generously funded by the National Research Foundation and the paper benefited from detailed comments by Suzanne McCoskey of the US Naval Academy as well as input from Corne van Walbeek and Murray Leibbrandt of UCT and two anonymous reviewers, but as always, any remaining mistakes are entirely my own
Savings, Insurance and Debt over the Post-Apartheid Period: A Review of Recent Research
No full textSustainable poverty reduction requires that poor households effectively manage risk. The absence of basic financial services is a major obstacle to poverty reduction in South Africa. This paper reviews available South African literature on utilisation of formal and informal risk management instruments. The centrality of income in accessing the complementary bundle of formal financial services excludes households in the lower deciles from formal financial services. Rural households and households without formally employed household members are also denied access. Strong complementarities with informal channels of finance mean that these same households have limited access to even informal financial services. Promoting the use of savings accounts in pension and social grant payouts and the growth of village banks have been suggested as means to increase formal access for the poor
The impact of health on poverty: Evidence from the South African integrated family survey
No full textThis paper examines the impact of health status on poverty status, accounting for the endogeneity of health status. Using exogenous measures of health status from the South African Integrated Health Survey, we instrument for health status while allowing for covariation among the unobservables influencing both health and household poverty status. Health status, as captured by the body mass index, is shown to strongly influence poverty status. Households that contain more unhealthy individuals are 60% more likely to be income poor than households that contain fewer unhealthy individuals, and this finding appears invariant to the choice of poverty line
Race and trust in post-apartheid South Africa
No full textI examine the impact of racial identity on behavior in trust games played by White, Black and Colored high school students in South Africa. There is a systematic pattern of distrust towards Black partners, even by Black proposers, partially attributable to mistaken expectations. White proposers are significantly less likely to engage in a strategic interaction at all when paired with a Black partner, while Colored and Black proposers engage in exchange but at lower levels than when paired with nonBlacks. However, greater racial diversity in schools and friendship groups is positively and significaantly associated with greater trust towards Black partners.Many thanks to Sam Bowles, Michael Ash, Gene Fisher, Malcolm Keswell, Catherine Eckel, Jeff Carpenter, Glenn Harrison, Abigail Barr, Iris Bohnet, and Geert Dhaene for their valuable comments and useful insights on earlier drafts. I must thank the Western Cape Education Department for authorising this project, all the school principals who so graciously allowed us into their schools on three separate occasions, and for the teachers who volunteered to help us with logistical support. I am also grateful to Prof. Rob Sieborger from the School of Education
at the University of Cape Town, who was instrumental in helping me set up many of the school visits, and to my wonderful team of research assistants, headed by Chris Raubenheimer, for their help in running the sessions. This work was generously supported by the MacArthur Network on Norms and Preferences, The National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa, the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), and the Santa Fe Institute
Estimates of labour demand elasticities and elasticities of substitution using firm-level manufacturing data
No full textUsing firm-level manufacturing data supplemented with wages from household survey data, this paper estimates translog cost functions to calculate labour demand elasticities and Allen Elasticities of Substitution between capital and four occupation types. It finds that own-price labour demand elasticities range from 0.56 to 0.8, that capital and all occupation types are substitutes and that most occupation types are themselves complements