Up-to-date, nationally representative household income/expenditure data are crucial to estimating poverty during the … COVID-19 pandemic and to policy-making more broadly, but South Africa lacks such data. We present new pandemic poverty …-loss-induced poverty: a headcount ratio increase at the upper-bound poverty line of 5.2 percentage points (3.1 million people/13 per cent …

We use a fiscal incidence model based on the South African 2014/15 Living Conditions Survey to simulate the poverty … COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress grant upon its expiry and closing the extreme (food poverty line) poverty gap. Our key … findings are that the introduction of a household-targeted family poverty grant is theoretically able to reduce extreme poverty …