Granting assistance: an analysis of the Child Support Grant and its extension to seven- and eight-year-olds

This paper focuses on the Child Support Grant (CSG), the biggest poverty alleviation mechanism targeting children. The extent of poverty and increased social security provision in South Africa are examined to contextualise the CSG. Since its inception in 1998, this grant has been available to poor children from birth to six years of age. At the beginning of April 2003, eligibility was extended to children under the age of nine as a first step in extending the grant to all poor children up to the age of fourteen. This paper considers the first year of this extension. Using administrative data from the Department of Social Development and relevant development literature, the paper assesses the reach of the CSG and its extension relative to the departments own targets, and absolute poverty lines. Provincial uptake rates are calculated with a view to identifying provinces where additional support is needed to increase uptake of the CSG. The remainder of the paper identifies administrative issues in the roll-out of the grant, highlighting the cases of children whose grants have lapsed due to the age limit, only to re-register a few months later, and concerns about the very low levels of the means test thresholds. The paper then looks at the demographics of beneficiaries of the CSG, including the gender, marital status, rural or urban location and relationship of caregiver to child. The author concludes that the department came close to reaching its own targets, and was successful in reaching very large numbers of children aged seven and eight in this first year of the extension. However, low uptake rates in the Eastern Cape Province in particular are highlighted, while problems in the administrative system are pointed out, as grants lapse because of the death of a caregiver or because of shifting age eligibility