Covid grants blunt SA s hunger crisis ’
• Urban shack dwellers bear biggest brunt • Food security still not back to pre-lockdown level
Government social grants, which were increased and expanded during the Covid-19 lockdown, had a significant impact on extreme poverty, reducing the number of households that went hungry by 27%, a major survey has found.
However, hunger levels are still far above pre-coronavirus levels, with as many as 16% of households reporting that they went hungry in the seven days preceding the survey.
The National Income Dynamics Study — Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, by 30 researchers at six universities and co-ordinated by the University of Stellenbosch’s Nic Spaull, reported its second-wave findings for fieldwork carried out in July and August on Wednesday.
Among the key findings are that while the lockdown devastated employment and incomes, especially for low-income earners, grants went some way to mitigating the impact. For example, 47% of households reported that in April they had run out of money to buy food before the end of the month. By June, as access to social grants increased, this dropped to 37%.
But these rates of hunger are still substantially higher than pre-coronavirus levels. When the same question was asked in the Stats SA Community Survey in 2016, a total of 16% of households in the metro areas and 28% of rural households reported running out of food before the end of the month.
Urban shack dwellers bore the biggest brunt of the lockdown, going hungry far more often than any other category of people, with more than half running out of food before the end of the month, even after the rollout of social grants had begun.
About 4.3-million people received the R350 grant payment for the unemployed, with the vast majority of these in the poorest section of the population. This is equal to 12% of all adults and one in four of the unemployed who are actively looking for work.
However, a large number of people — 6.5-million — did not receive anything, even though, according to their income levels, they would have been eligible.
Researchers said there are several explanations for this, including that they may be registered with the SA Revenue Service as self-employed.
Fewer shack dwellers received grants than those in formal housing in townships
and in rural areas, the reasons for which the researchers said they are yet to unravel.
The R350 grant and the topup of the old-age pension and child support grantwill be available for a six-month period, which is nearing an end.
While grants mitigated some of the damage done, the researchers found that the 3million jobs lost early in the lockdown had not come back by June. The most significant change in the labour market was that 54% of people placed on furlough returned to employment, while 40% fell into unemployment.
The researchers said that the overall job loss count of 3-million in the survey was “qualitatively similar” to the outcome of the quarterly labour force survey reported on Tuesday, given the way both have in the past measured employment.
The labour force survey by Stats SA showed that 2.2-million jobs were lost during the second quarter.
Job losses fell disproportionately for women, the unskilled and less educated. The percentage decline in employment between February and June was 10 times higher for the poorest 50% of the workforce, 30% of whom lost jobs compared with the richest 25% of workers, among whom only 3% lost employment. Informal workers were twice as likely to lose jobs than people in the formal sector.
Since the lockdown began, more women lost jobs — 20% of those employed — than men, among whom 13% lost their jobs. The earnings of women who remained employed took a bigger hit than those of men, with researchers finding wage inequality increased substantially, probably driven by a reduction in working hours due to the kind of work women perform and a disproportionate increase in child-care responsibilities.
The slow employment recovery and the imminent ending of the R350 grant and topups of other grants have raised questions over possible government policy responses to the enduring damage to livelihoods brought about by the lockdown.
While the government plans a large expansion of public employment programmes as part of the Covid-19 economic recovery plan, there is a growing lobby among civil society organisations for an extension of the grant or the introduction of a basic income grant.
The survey has two more waves to go, which will provide more information on the labour market recovery and on livelihoods of the most vulnerable.
MORE WOMEN LOST JOBS — 20% OF THOSE EMPLOYED — THAN MEN, AMONG WHOM 13% LOST THEIR JOBS