It is great to see social policy research be given some good coverage
recently by South African media and SA tweeters at large, especially in the last
week. In the social protection space, South African journalists have been
highlighting research on the positive well-being outcomes on poor children as a
result of social grants. Furthermore, the Department of Social development’s
recent actions on their new technological system of distribution is providing transparency
on their service provider and reacting to beneficiary feedback.
Social protection policy is key to meeting the constitutional rights of
equity in South Africa. There are several social welfare programmes in
place such as cash transfers through social grants.
A. Recent Research on well-being outcomes and poverty reduction & social grants
Today, social grants
have evidence of improving the well-being outcomes of poor children (Coetzee,
2014) as well as helpe to alleviate poverty (Woolard & Leibbrandt, 2010).
Using the NIDS 2008 data, Coetzee (2014) shows specific analysis of the
average changes on a child who had received the grant for 10 percentage point
of his or her life longer than others (Below are results directly from herEcon3x3 paper):
- “Height-for-age: Approximately 1cm taller. (In terms of the normal
patterns of the height of children, this is a statistically significant
increase.
- The probability of repeating a school year: A decrease of approximately
4 percentage points. (Since the average probability of repeating a school year
in the sample is 20%, this is quite an improvement – and it is statistically
significant.)
- Monthly food expenditure: A statistically significant increase of
between R3.50 and R5 per person. (Since households in the sample on average
spent R130 per person on food per month, this is a
3% increase in monthly food expenditure per person. This may underestimate
the effect of the grant on children’s food intake. A smaller amount is
typically spent on food for children than for adults (children consume less
food than adults), thus the relative increase in expenditure on a child’s food
probably amounts to more than 3%. This could also explain the increase in
children’s height for age.
- Expenditure on adult goods: A decrease of approximately 1 percentage
point. (This is quite large – and statistically significant – given that the
average household spent approximately 4% of household spending on such goods.)”
Further interest in the research above can be found
from her original paper:
Coetzee, M. (2013). Finding the Benefits: Estimating
the Impact of The South African Child Support Grant. South African Journal
of Economics, 81(3), 427-450. doi: 10.1111/j.1813-6982.2012.01338.x
B. Social protection in the SA News
You can also read the short summary and commentary on the research findings by two journalists.
- I love tweets and one tweeter @lindseymoyo summed the article: "how
child welfare grants of as little as R310/month can have a significant
impact."
Speaking of tweets, I (along with other tweeters!) picked up on this story due to the Daily Maverick’s
regular tweet feed which led me to another article referencing Paton and
Coetzee’s work.
- The article is an attempt by Daily Maverick's Stephen Grootes to dispel
some of the cynicism around social grants in South Africa. The cynics
believe that it is wasted time and money to provide the poor with taxpayer's
money through social grants. This story again provides some of
information on Coetzee's study on improved educational and health outcomes on
children in households which receive grants. He tells SA to take some
praise for the social welfare work they have to date.
Other news in social development which piqued my interest were the next two articles:
- In summary, a Ministerial task team under the Department of Social Development will
look into latest complaints and issues of unscrupulous lending to social grant
beneficiaries.
In the story, Ms Dlamini is quoted in saying,
"during
my visits to many poor rural and urban communities, I received many complaints
from beneficiaries about various types of deductions, including loans,
deductions from multiple funeral schemes, electricity and airtime from social
grants payments, often without their knowledge or consent."
Since the new grant payment system had come online, I would see examples
of these horror stories of recipients who would see automatic deductions made
to their account and not knowing where such authorisation had taken place.
The ministry’s task team is looking to stop such
exploitation including “prohibit[ing] credit providers and other persons from
conducting and marketing their products within defined perimeters of SASSA
offices and pay-points”.
The Ensor article further states that not all low-income
household have signed up for the support grant:
"more than 16-million
social assistance grants are paid monthly, though Ms Dlamini said that the take-up
rate for the child support grant for infants from birth to two years was
low."
Another interesting comment by Minister
Dlamini:
"This is a serious concern
for us because early intervention yields better outcomes for children."
"We plan to increase the take-up rate in this group by 70 %
through the implementation of various initiatives."
These statement is promising! This is given Coetzee's research that shows improved
health and educational outcomes amongst poor households whose children take on
nearly full advantage of receiving support grants for the full duration of the
child’s life. Is this a sign that politicians are taking up research-based
evidence appropriately?
This story is about the Constitutional Court case on Allpay (associated
with Absa) had taken SASSA's to court on the contract to Cash paymaster services
(CPS) to provide services on distributing social grants to over 10 million
South Africans.
According to Diseko, the court case was on the grounds for two issues: "There were two grounds
for this: first, CPS’s empowerment credentials had not been confirmed by Sassa;
and the bidders’ notice it put out was not sufficiently clear in what it wanted
in terms of biometric verification."
Apparently, previous articles were rather framing the SASSA in a manner as if it were
involved in malevolent action, corruption as such, which the article states is a distortion of the true
nature of the court case.
Given these four articles, South Africa media has been kind to social grants and researchers in this field this July 2014 month! :)
C. Social media reports on social grants and dependency (17 July 2014)
Today Sakina Kamwendo @SakinaKamwendo from SAFM's
Forum@8 asking the question: How do we break the chain of too much dependence
on Government? Kamwendo’s question ignites several great comments including the
DM article mentioned above.
Some great tweets from the Forum@8 I picked up were:
- @Ntru36 along with many other tweeters argues for the job creation
route, improving the support for small and medium sized businesses and
entrepreneurs.
- @Gomo_R talks about taking ownership and responsibility with one's own
neighbourhood in order to break out of government dependency. This led to a
back and forth tweet dialogue that when offered a bit more money, people would
move to take up other better opportunities. This remark brought up
questions of why not stick with one's community and invest efforts back into
it, in order to see socio-economic change from the ground. Another
tweeter mentions that his own school is in such a mess that even if help
arrived now, it would not see the immediate changes needed.
- Specifically looking at social grants, @nqalatha found grants to be the
best value of government money in supporting the poor.
- In the discussion, you also had your nay-sayers like Tweeter @inganande
who think the social grant system are full of government dependents.
Others like @tebza_e think the government currently put more weight on
social grants that helping to enhance job opportunities.
In tweetosphere summary, it has been great to see everyday South Africans be able to contribute to such a
social policy debate in a mix of spheres. In this case we see radio listeners converge with radio, having the chance to tweet their response rather than be the limited few who
can get airtime during a short radio broadbast.
D. Other social protection weblinks for July 2014
Institute of Development Studies brings to our
attention 'reframing social protection for social justice' or the special issue
for the European Journal of Development Research - an emerging reflection of
"the relationship between social protection and social justice".
One great summary for the webpage:
"It uses a human wellbeing framework to explore what
is required for social protection to be truly transformative. Social protection
can be conceived, designed and implemented in different ways so that it is
better able to deliver social justice in specific developing country
contexts."
Reference:
Woolard, I., & Leibbrandt, M. (2010). The
Evolution and Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers in South Africa In SALDRU
(Ed.). Cape Town: University of Cape Town.
