This paper investigates the household and individual characteristics that influence the demand and supply of informal credit in Uganda, which credit is important for improving the welfare of the poor. Informal credit demand is positively and significantly influenced by age, sex, education level,...

Increasing reference in the media and public discussions to high and rising levels of graduate unemployment in the South African labour market has raised concern about the functionality of South Africa’s higher education system and the employability of the graduates that it produces. While...

Given the nature of apartheid, social spending incidence figures were collected by race for many decades. An analysis of these figures shows an important structural break in racial patterns of social spending in the mid-1970s, with a major shift towards the black population. This left the...

To a large degree, the notoriously high levels of income inequality in South Africa have their roots in differential access to wage-earning opportunities in the labour market, which in turn are influenced by family background. This paper therefore investigates the role that parents' education...

Social grants may play an important role in mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDS. Eligibility for these grants is driven in part by the increasing burden of chronic illness, the mounting orphan crisis and the impoverishment of households associated with the epidemic. This article investigates the...

This paper analyses a previously unused source of data - the All Media and Product Survey (AMPS) - to arrive at alternative estimates of the post-transition poverty path. The motivations for using this non-official data source are twofold: concern over the comparability of the existing official...

Namibia has a long history of providing a universal and non-contributory old age pension, child grants using means testing and quasi-conditionalities, and other cash transfers. Multivariate analysis presented in this paper confirms that these transfers play an important role in alleviating...