Determinants of labour force participation in the North West province of South Africa

Based on data extracted from the 1995 October Household Survey of Statistics South Africa, this study has found that potential income is a major factor in labour force participation by African women in the North West province of South Africa. Other significant determinants of participation for both genders are age, education, region, marital status and relationship to the head of the household. The results imply that significant discrimination against African women still exists in the North West province, which partly explains the much lower participation rate for African women (64 per cent), compared with that of African men (86,5 per cent). The study supports the North West government's development strategy of developing human resources to eradicate poverty.     

The challenges facing empirical estimation of household food (in)security in South Africa

This paper sets out to describe current principle theoretical positions in food security research, describe and compare empirical South African food security studies with key international methodologies and pose research challenges for food security research in the country. Scant available food security studies for South Africa seem to indicate that food insecurity and hunger exist and are likely to increase due to increasing food price trends, greater reliance on cash food purchases and spiralling vulnerability as a result of HIV/AIDS morbidity and mortality. Empirical research is urgently needed to determine the coping strategies of households under ‘normal’ conditions, identify vulnerable households, and monitor the impact of various shocks and stresses on household food security.     

A quantitative determination of the food security status of rural farming households in the Northern Province of South Africa

The majority of South Africans living in rural areas are food insecure despite high levels of national food self-sufficiency. The household food security position of two groups of rural farming households in the Venda region was evaluated quantitatively: one group produces vegetables that are sold or consumed locally, the other group produces cash crops – mangoes and other subtropical fruits. Using the collected data, food availability and energy, protein and fat requirements were calculated and balances derived. It was found that more than 80 per cent of the households had a negative balance of energy, protein and fat intake. The average energy, protein and fat coverage consumption was the same for both groups of farmers. A number of agricultural determinants were tested, but only non-agricultural determinants were found to be significant. These include household size, household (food) expenditure and proportion of the budget spent on food.     

Silences speak louder than claims: Gender, household, and agricultural development in Southern Africa

Social sciences — and economic theory particularly — continue to treat the household as a socioeconomic unit, in which all members strive for a common end. This conceptualization, which leaves the social relations of gender and the concominant inequalities in access to land, produce and income unaccounted for, has continued to determine the policies of development agencies, and women and development (WID) units. This failure has gained renewed prominence and political relevance in the efficiency approach of structural adjustment programs. On the basis of empirical household data from Zambia, the article questions the validity of the conceptualization of cash and food crop production along gender lines as equal parts in the household enterprise and instead pleads for a recognition of a gender differentiated concept of control over household production as a basis for future development planning.     

The Food (In)Security Impact of Land Redistribution in South Africa: Microeconometric Evidence from National Data

The South African land-reform program has been widely criticized for its slow pace as well as its apparent lack of contribution to poverty reduction. No econometric evidence of the impact of land transfers has been provided to date and this paper attempts to fill this gap by considering the impact of receiving a land grant on households’ food insecurity. Propensity score matching and univariate probit estimates using two national household surveys indicate that, on average, land grant recipients are more food insecure than comparable non-participants. Recursive bivariate probit estimates suggest that selection bias is not driving this result.     

The Scramble in Africa: Reorienting Rural Livelihoods

Structural adjustment and market liberalization policies of the past 15 years have accelerated deagrarianization in sub-Saharan Africa. Peasant producers have veered away from production of traditional export crops and commercial staple foods in rural areas remote from roads and urban markets. Nonagricultural income diversification has been substituted in the search for much-needed cash earnings. Citing recent village survey evidence, this paper argues that the economic restructuring of African smallholders' work lives has been accompanied by deep-rooted social change. Divisions of labor and decision-making power within peasant households have altered and wealth differentiation between households has deepened. Depeasantization of the countryside is currently taking place, as rural household members of both genders “scramble” for viable livelihoods.     

Job Creation and Destruction in South Africa

Analysts of the South African labour market have mainly used household surveys to analyse the labour market. It has been more difficult to explore the labour demand of firms, as a result of limited data availability. We use the Quarterly Employment Statistics survey, an enterprise survey conducted by Statistics South Africa, to explore how South African firms create and destroy jobs, thereby shedding light on many of the policy questions that are relevant in a high unemployment society like South Africa. We find that job creation and destruction rates are similar to those found in Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries. There is little evidence that labour legislation creates rigidities that prevent firms from hiring or firing workers. We also find that larger firms are better net creators of jobs than small firms and that net job creation rates are negative in manufacturing. Our research has important policy implications – particularly for the South African National Planning Commission's 2030 plan, in which new jobs are envisaged to come mainly from small‐ and medium‐sized firms. Our research suggests that this scenario is not likely without changes to policy or legislation.     

Farm household economics: Some policy implications for emergent farmers in Southern Africa

Farm household economics recognises the fact that production and consumption decisions are made jointly by small farm (ie surplus‐producing) households. This phenomenon is of particular importance in areas where small farm households predominate.

Most empirical applications of farm household economics have been directed at measuring the effects of price changes on consumption and have relied on the ‘separable’ approach in deriving estimates. This approach assumes that production decisions always precede consumption decisions with farm households treated as profit maximizers in production and utility maximizers in consumption. Results have clearly demonstrated consumption responses smaller than estimates based on consumer theory alone.

Although many researchers regard mathematical programming as a potentially suitable tool for simulating smallholder behaviour, proponents of new household economics would be reluctant to accept any model that does not (a) maximize utility (rather than profit) and (b) capture the ‘profit effect’ which variations in product prices have on the farm household's full‐income constraint. Attempts to include these basic postulates of farm household economics in programming models are in progress.     

The Political Economy of Urban Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan African cities in the late 1990s face a daunting set of problems including rapid growth, increasing poverty, deteriorating infrastructure, and inadequate capacity for service provision. Even as a renewed debate is shaping up around issues of urban development, there is little attention given to the question of urban food security. Whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, urban food problems in Africa commanded political attention, the nature of urban food insecurity in the 1990s is such that it has tended to lose political importance. This is largely because in the 1970s, the problem was one of outright food shortages and rapid price changes that affected large portions of the urban population simultaneously. The impact of structural adjustment, continued rapid growth, and an increase in poverty make urban food insecurity in the 1990s primarily a problem of access by the urban poor. Under circumstances where the urban poor spend a very large portion of their total income on food, urban poverty rapidly translates into food insecurity. The lack of formal safety nets, and the shifting of responsibility for coping with food insecurity away from the state towards the individual and household level has tended to atomize and muffle any political response to this new urban food insecurity. This paper briefly reviews urban food insecurity and generates a set of empirical questions for an analysis of food and livelihood security in contemporary urban sub-Saharan Africa, and then examines historical and contemporary evidence from Kampala, Uganda, and Accra, Ghana, to suggest some tentative conclusions.     

Agricultural efficiency and welfare in South Africa

Agricultural and food commodity price declines associated with domestic and international agricultural efficiency gains can have important welfare effects for a country. While food price reductions benefit low-income consumers in particular, they may also cause declines in agricultural employment, leading to some resistance to technological change as a policy goal. The simulations reported here use a South African Computable General Equilibrium model with highly disaggregated food and agricultural sectors to illustrate the various effects of such agricultural efficiency gains. The results suggest that technological advances in agriculture should not be resisted because of their negative impact on agricultural employment; the welfare gains from declining prices are too important, while employment gains in other (growing) sectors are likely to outweigh the loss of agricultural employment. In the face of increasing international efficiency South African agriculture should be encouraged to respond by also increasing its efficiency, despite the negative consequences for employment in the industry, as a failure to do so may be even more detrimental to the poor in terms of overall employment.     

Knowledge production and publishing in Africa

This article explores the practice of ‘knowledge production’ and ‘publishing’ in Africa. Knowledge production and publishing in Africa has been and still is dominated by Western experts, most of whose interests do not serve Africa. Powerful social groups in post-colonial Africa construct knowledge about Africa from the sites of universities. Ordinary people also produce knowledge, most of which is elaborated through unwritten forms, and actually contest dominant modes of knowing. Publishing in Africa ought to be controlled by Africans if African states are to realise the dream of an African renaissance. African governments ought to invest in knowledge production and publishing. African intellectuals with university education should work with ordinary African intellectuals to create new sites of knowledge. Knowledge production and publishing is not an ideologically neutral phenomenon. Therefore, African governments should create, and not thwart, conditions conducive to knowledge production and publishing that is self-interrogating.     

Poverty Comparisons Over Time and Across Countries in Africa

We use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to compare “poverty” at two or more points in time within and between African countries. Our welfare measure is an index resulting from a factor analysis of various household characteristics, durables, and household heads’ education. An advantage of this measure is that for intertemporal and intraregional comparisons, we need not rely on suspect price deflators and currency conversion factors. The wide availability and similarity of questionnaires of the DHS facilitate comparisons over both time and countries. Our results generally show declines in poverty during the previous decade, largely due to improvements in rural areas.     

Situation analysis of an informal settlement in the Vaal Triangle

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has indicated that urban poverty is found primarily in squatter settlements. At present one in seven (13,5 per cent) of all South African households live in informal settlements. The major research question is to what extent the interlocking micro-mechanisms identified by UNICEF as causes of malnutrition influence the nutrition and health of residents in an informal settlement in the Vaal Triangle. This question will be tested empirically against the UNICEF framework of immediate, underlying and basic causes of malnutrition. Pre-tested questionnaires were administered to 340 randomly selected care-givers. A previously validated quantified food frequency questionnaire was administered by trained enumerators as the test measurement, and 24-hour recall as the reference measurement, for dietary intake and food consumption patterns. The data were statistically analysed for means and standard deviations. The great majority of the respondents (nine out of ten) live in corrugated iron shacks, and overcrowding is common; 32 per cent live in two rooms or fewer, 44 per cent in three to four rooms and 24 per cent in more than four rooms. Thirty-one per cent of the households consisted of six or more members, 19 per cent of five members, 22 per cent of four members and 28 per cent of three or fewer members. The unemployment rate was 94 per cent for respondents and 80 per cent for their partners. Two-thirds of care-givers (69 per cent) have an income below R500 per month. The main health problems that were observed were chronic coughing (44 per cent) and headaches (54 per cent). The causes of these were not established. Diets were poor and consisted overwhelmingly of refined carbohydrates. The top 10 food items consumed were: stiff and soft maize meal porridge, brewed rooibos and leaf tea, coffee, mabela, white bread, crumbly maize porridge, carbonated cold drink and mageu. The daily intakes (mean and standard deviation) of various nutrients were: 4550?±?1993 kJ energy, 20?±?9 g protein, 21?±?21 g fat and 182?±?78 g carbohydrates. The results indicate that this is a poverty-stricken community with chronic household food insecurity and compromised nutrition. It is hoped that the knowledge gained from this survey will improve the planning and implementation of sustainable community-based interventions to promote urban household food security and combat nutrition-related diseases.     

Concepts and Measures of Saving: Selected Issues for South Africa

South African household savings rates have been declining steadily over the last five decades, raising concerns that the population structurally under‐saves. Against the background of new saving‐enhancing policy initiatives, this paper asks to what extent the concern is founded, and whether the measurement of saving is really appropriate to guide economic policy. Comparing different macroeconomic concepts and measurements of saving, we show that the measure of saving in the national accounts (the residual between income and expenditure) understates the household savings rate compared to other measures. Specifically, an alternative measure from the balance sheets (the change in wealth) yields a significantly higher and non‐declining figure. While households have not been “putting aside” their incomes, they have nevertheless grown richer, driven largely by the appreciation of asset valuations. We also examine the impact of taking non‐financial saving and wealth into account, and conclude that household sector saving on the aggregate is significantly higher than the national accounts suggest. However, these adjusted measures are most relevant for the upper tail of the income and wealth distribution, raising important distributional concerns.     

Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes in Africa*

Abstract: This paper provides econometric evidence linking African countries’ per capita total as well as government health expenditures and per capita income to two health outcomes: infant mortality and under‐five mortality. This relationship is examined using data from 47 African countries between 1999 and 2004. Health expenditures have a statistically significant negative effect on infant and under‐five mortality rates. The magnitude of our elasticity estimates are in consonance to those reported in the literature. For African countries, our results imply that total health expenditures (as well as the public component) are certainly important contributors to health outcomes. In addition, we find that both infant and under‐five mortality are positively and significantly associated with sub‐Saharan Africa. The reverse is true for North Africa. While ethnolinguistic fractionalization and HIV prevalence positively and significantly affect the health outcomes, higher numbers of physicians and female literacy significantly reduce these health outcomes. These results have important implications for attaining the targets envisioned by the Millennium Development Goals. The data implications are also discussed.     

Patterns of poverty in South Africa

This article brings together results from two large household surveys ‐ the October Household Survey and the Income and Expenditure Survey of 1995. The analysis adopts a simple definition of income poverty which allows comparisons between households in ten deciles defined on the basis of per capita household income. The analysis compares access to resources such as housing and land, and access to basic services across these households. It then examines the economic status of women and men living in households with different incomes. The article shows consistent correlation of per capita income with other examined variables. It illustrates further how women within each decile are disad‐vantagedcomparedwith men in terms of economic status and earning.     

The Invisible Hand of Rain in Spending: Effect of Rainfall‐Driven Agricultural Income on Per Capita Expenditure in Ghana

This paper uses a nationally representative household pseudo‐panel dataset for Ghana, a rain‐fed agriculture economy, to investigate whether there is a positive relationship between rainfall‐driven agricultural income and household per capita expenditure. By using the Two Stage Least Squares Instrumental Variable (2SLS‐IV) estimator, it is found that a fall in rainfall‐driven agricultural income leads to a decrease in per capita expenditure. The results show that the gender and the locality of the household head matter in the response of per capita expenditures to rainfall‐driven agricultural income. Female‐headed and rural households are more vulnerable to rainfall‐driven agricultural income changes. The expenditure disaggregation indicates that female‐headed households significantly reduce per capita non‐food expenditure in times of rainfall‐induced agricultural income decrease whilst the response of male‐headed households focuses more on reducing per capita food and remittance expenditures.     

The Effects of Remittances on Output per Worker in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Production Function Approach

This paper uses a production function to examine the channels through which remittances affect output per worker in 31 Sub‐Saharan African countries from 1980 to 2010. Lagged remittances increase physical capital per worker, average years of schooling and total factor productivity, but the effectiveness of remittances varies with the income level of the recipient nation. Although remittances have increased both physical capital and total factor productivity among the upper middle income nations, among the lower middle income, they have increased only the physical capital. Meanwhile a reduction in institutional risk has encouraged investment and efficiency, but its relationship to the effectiveness of remittances has been inconclusive.     

Strengthening institutional safety nets in South Africa: Sharing operation hunger's insights and experiences

Poverty and malnutrition are major problems in South Africa, especially among black people in rural areas. The poorest are heavily dependent on social pensions, remittances, low wages, piece jobs and, to a very small extent, household agriculture. Industrial safety nets are weak and do not necessarily help the vulnerable to overcome their poverty. This article draws on the experience of Operation Hunger, a South African NGO founded in 1980, to examine the impact of poverty‐alleviation programmes on the recipients. The article reviews the strategies employed by the government and NGOs to strengthen vulnerable households ‐food aid, public works and agricultural programmes ‐ drawing on Operation Hunger's experience in these areas. The article concludes that targeting, monitoring and evaluating, and piloting development programmes are crucial, and stresses the importance of NGOs in this regard.     

Increases in poverty in South Africa, 1999–2002

Analysis of the results in the 1999 October Household Survey and the 2002 Labour Force Survey suggests that the number of people in the bottom two expenditure classes (R0–R399 and R400–R799 per household per month) increased by about 4,2 million over the period. As the boundaries of these expenditure classes remained constant in nominal terms, there is a likelihood that the number of people in poverty will have increased as well. This article attempts to discover whether this is indeed the case. The possible increase in the number of people in poverty is not equal to the increase in the number of people in these two expenditure categories. Rather, it is equal to the difference between the numbers of people in poverty in the two years. Our first crude estimate of the maximum potential number of ‘new’ poor suggests that it could be as high as 4,5 million. This estimate, which excludes any adjustments for possible underreporting of expenditure, child cost economies and household economies of scale, and the ‘social wage’, is whittled down as we attempt to make the relevant allowances. Responding to claims that poverty is increasing in the country, the government has pointed to a failure to consider the contribution of the social wage to the alleviation of poverty. Accordingly, we have also attempted to estimate the impact of the social wage.