Poverty in South Africa: A profile based on recent household surveys

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 markers” (including geographical location, population group, gender, household structure, the age of the head of the household, and employment status) to identify key characteristics of poverty groups, and also highlights other important dimensions of poverty (deficient access to infrastructure services, high transport cost burdens, limited education attainments, and exposure to hunger). The paper further emphasises that the expansion of social grants since 1999 has significantly reduced extreme poverty.Poverty, Poverty markers, Burden of poverty, Social grants, South Africa