History of child support grant
The South African Support Grant (CSG) was first introduced in 1998. Prior to this, the government provided a limited State Maintenance Grant (SMS). Applicants for the SMG needed to prove that they were the sole provider and caregiver for a child under the age of 17.
Parents who were widowed, divorced, had been deserted by their spouse, or had a spouse in jail or other institution that made working impossible, were eligible to receive grants.
A household survey done in 1990 analysed the impact of this grant and found that only 0.2 percent of African children were in receipt of state maintenance grants, while 1.5 percent of white children, 4 percent of Indian children and 4.8 percent of coloured children received the grant.
Ease of receipt was dependent on location; children living in rural areas were often excluded due to lack of knowledge regarding the grant, inability to travel to application sites, and other administrative problems.
In December 1995, the government of South Africa established the Lund Committee to evaluate the current social protection system and provide advice on ways to improve it. The committee recommended a Child Support Grant that would reach a greater number of children and families.
Following the recommendations, CSG replaced the state maintenance grant in 1998.
The modifications made the grant more accessible to caregivers and children and enabled the programme to substantially increase the participation rate.
The CSG was paid to the primary caregiver of the child at a level of R100 per month. Recipients of the grant were required to pass a means test which was based on household income.
Families living in rural areas earning a household income below R800 a month and families in urban areas earning a household income below R1 100 were eligible to receive the grant. Recipients needed to offer proof of income in order to validate that the household income level being reported was correct and, if the caregiver was not the child’s parent, proof that efforts to secure funds from the child’s parents were made unsuccessfully.
The means test for the CSG was changed again in 1999 such that grant eligibility was determined based on caregiver’s and spouse’s income as opposed to household income.
In 2008, accepting a study by the Economic Policy Research Institute, the Department of Social development changed the means test so that the eligibility threshold was equal to 10 times the value of the grant. The same year, the CSG benefit was set at R210 per month and the income threshold was set at R1 000 for rural households and R800 for urban households.
Since then, the grant amount, and therefore the means threshold, has increased in a stepwise fashion.
The grant amount as of April 2012 is R280 per month, and the threshold is set at R33 600 per year for single caregivers and R67 000 per year for married couples. Since the introduction of the CSD, modifications to age limit eligibility have also been made. When the grant was first created in 1998, it was limited to children younger than seven years old. In April 2003, the age limit was increased to include children under the age of nine.
This was further extended in 2004 and 2005 to include children up to the age of eleven and fourteen respectively. In 2008 children under the age of fifteen became eligible to receive the grant. Currently, a child is eligible until the18th birthday.