South African households have become more dependent on the government’s social assistance as social grants remain the main source of income for almost one-quarter of households nationally on the back of stagnant economic growth and widespread unemployment.
This was revealed by Statistics SA (Stats SA) during the release of the General Household Survey 2023 on Thursday.
Stats SA said social grants remained crucial for household survival, especially in the poorest provinces.
It said the proportion of households and individuals benefiting from social grants increased from 12.8% in 2003 to 30.9% in 2019, and surged to 39.4% in 2023 due to the introduction of the special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant
Statistician-General Risenga Maluleke said households that considered social grants their main source of income increased sharply in 2020, mainly due to the larger intake of the SRD grant, but had since declined.
“For example, at household level we were sitting at 30.8% in 2002, now sitting at 50%. At the individual level, we were sitting at 12.8% in 2002 and now we are sitting at 39.4%,” Maluleke said.
“We are seeing that grants were the main source of income for almost one quarter, that is 23% of households nationally, while the source of income for 54.8% households came from salaries.”
Maluleke said the province that had the least main source of income for households was Limpopo, sitting at 41.2%, followed by the Eastern Cape.
“When we look at grants, we can see that the Eastern Cape is still leading the pack. Previously, we had seen the Eastern Cape having the least sources of income coming from salaries at household level,” he said.
“Provinces that show that they are higher than the national average of salaries being the main source of income are Gauteng and the Western Cape, with the Western Cape sitting at 68.6% right at the bottom.”
Duma Gqubule, a research associate at the Social Policy Initiative and independent economist, said people tended to be “alarmist” when it came to the issue of social grants, while ignoring their crucial intervention.
Gqubule said social grants were a necessary intervention currently as the country had more than 12 million jobless people of working age, according to the expanded definition of unemployment.
“People must remember that the SRD grant is very small, it’s less than half of the poverty line and it’s 2% of the government spending, and it makes a huge difference to the lives of about 8 to 9 million people. It’s a relatively small contribution towards addressing issues of widespread hunger and inequality in our country,” Gqubule said.
“Our spending, even after this, is not high according to international standards. We spend about 5.5% of GDP on social security, including other items such as the UIF, but the world average is 12.9%, and the average for upper middle-income countries like ours is 8%.
“But this thing of social grants is a reflection of the failure of the government to create a thriving economy that creates jobs so we can all get progressively richer as South Africans. Over the past 15 years the living standard has declined, it’s a desperate situation.”
Meanwhile, the General Household Survey also showed that the percentage of households that had limited access to food decreased from 23.6% in 2010 to 17.8% in 2019, after which it increased to 23.1% by 2023.
“Nationally, 23.1% of households consider their access to food as inadequate or severely inadequate,” Maluleke said.
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