The Human Sciences Research Council's four-year study of street homelessness in South Africa highlights the way unemployment stresses poor households and sets in motion processes of exclusion, and suggests that the social wage safety net is not protecting the street homeless. Although subsidised...

This paper provides a non-technical, snapshot-like profile of poverty in South Africa based on two surveys recently conducted by Statistics South Africa: the Income and expenditure survey of households 2005/06 (IES2005) and the General household survey 2006 (GHS2006). It uses various “poverty...

The democratic government in South Africa has developed a system of social grants to combat the high levels of poverty and inequality inherited from the apartheid regime. With the help of modest economic growth and an associated increase in per capita hou

Cash transfer programs hold significant potential to mitigate the economic burdens resulting from the HIV epidemic and enhance the wellbeing of affected children. South Africa offers two cash transfers designed specifically to benefit children: the Child Support Grant, for low income families...

This paper will have a closer look at the role of South African welfare programs on the labour supply decision across generations. From a theoretical point of view, a change in non-labour household income will affect the decision to participate in the labour market. Previous studies have focused...

This paper discusses the nature and effects of social grants programmes in South Africa against the backdrop of international trends in the reform of social assistance systems. It shows that South Africa has a well-developed social assistance system that significantly reduces extreme poverty, in...

This paper reflects on the current state and likely future of the South African social assistance system, focusing specifically on its fiscal sustainability, its effectiveness as an instrument to combat poverty in a longer-term developmental sense, and its impact on the allocation of resources....

This article reviews some basic features of inequality in South African society and in the national innovation system, using national research survey data. It poses questions about how sub-national innovation systems might evolve in the 'less favoured regions' of South Africa. It commences with...

This study identifies sources of risk that commercial sugarcane farmers in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa, presently perceive to pose the greatest threat to the viability of their businesses. Sugarcane contributes approximately 82% of the income from field crops in KZN, with...

This paper analyzes the complexities of converting assets into livelihood and the role that agency constraints play. Drawing inspiration from the capabilities approach and using household data from South Africa, linkages between assets and agency are identified by decomposing asset endowments’...