Being poor in SA gets more expensive

IF YOU thought this week’s 11 cent increase in the petrol price was bad, spare a thought for those on South Africa’s extreme poverty line for whom the cost of being poor has risen.

According to figures published by Statistics SA this week, R561 is the minimum amount the poorest South Africans should have every month if they are to eat enough to meet their minimum required daily energy needs.

Or to put it another way, if you cannot scrape together R18.70 every day in a 30-day month, you face malnutrition at best, and starvation at worst.

Meanwhile, with the cost of food rising faster than the consumer price index, the poor are bound to feel the impact of inflation more than anyone else.

The new data released by Stats SA uses April 2019 prices and also shows the lower-bound poverty line is now R810 per person per month, while the upper-bound poverty line is R1 227 per person per month. A decade ago, the amounts across the categories were R318, R456 and R709.

In a report, Stats SA said: “Poverty lines are important tools that allow for the statistical reporting of poverty levels and patterns, as well as the planning, monitoring and evaluation of poverty reduction programmes and policies.”

Hugo Pienaar, chief economist at the Bureau for Economic Research at Stellenbosch University, said: “The extreme poverty line basically aims to give us an idea of the monthly income someone in South Africa will require to stay alive. It is, of course, almost inconceivable that anyone can live off such little income, but this is in a nutshell what the poverty line aims to measure.”

This number is adjusted once a year by the consumer price index so that it keeps up to date with price changes in the economy.

“So whereas Stats SA estimated that in 2018 you required R547 per month to meet the most basic of food intake requirement, in 2019 you require a monthly income of R561.

“Considering there are 30 or 31 days per month, it equates to R18 to R19 per day,” said Pienaar.

According to Stats SA: “The construction of new poverty lines is generally done once every five to 10 years or when there are notable changes observed in household consumption patterns.”