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– Source: Photo by Dino Lloyd / Gallo Images via Getty Images
The recent political and social unrest in parts of South Africa has once again highlighted the deep structural problems facing the nation. These include high levels of poverty for an upper-middle-income country, largely due to extreme income inequality, which means that a large portion of the population is much poorer than average, and massive unemployment.
Hunger is another feature of inequalities in South Africa that has become relevant in the current socio-political climate. Hunger is of course subjective, but questions on hunger are widely used in short surveys to measure the food situation of respondents. Many commentators have pointed out that this is one of the underlying causes of the unrest. We are not suggesting that hunger is the cause of the current social upheaval. But, together with other deep-rooted structural inequalities, it provides additional fuel to the socio-political conflagration.
We recently investigated hunger during the COVID-19 era as part of the National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM). This nationally representative panel survey of 7,000 South Africans aimed to provide rapid data on key outcomes such as unemployment, household income, child hunger and access to government subsidies.
Our research emerged as a working paper based on the survey published in early July. Our results suggest that hunger and food insecurity – disruption of food intake or eating habits due to lack of money and other resources – have increased in South Africa due to the pandemic. In 2019, just before the epidemic, a national household survey found that 11% of households had suffered from hunger in the past year. The most recent NIDS-CRAM survey showed that 15% of respondents experienced this during the week before their interview.
This increase follows a period of almost 20 years in which hunger levels have declined. The introduction of child support in 1998 has been one of the main reasons South Africa has made progress. Data for the period 2002 to 2019 showed a halving of hunger in children and adults.
But while hunger had diminished, the quality of food remained a major problem. This is evident from the fact that stunting remained higher.
While the roll-out of child support and moderate economic growth caused hunger to decline in the early 2000s, this decline slowed after the 2008 financial recession.
The economic shock caused by the pandemic and the lockdowns drastically changed the situation and turned the tide. In addition, the NIDS-CRAM surveys have shown that hunger now appears to have stabilized at new levels.
Impact monitoring
The NIDS-CRAM study was introduced in response to the need for nationally representative data on the socio-economic situation of South Africans. This was done by telephone in the country’s 11 official languages, with a broadly nationally representative sample being interviewed five times.
This gave researchers a perspective on how circumstances would change during a time of great volatility. The survey responded to a specific need for up-to-date and nationally representative data to inform the political process in times of crisis.
The panel survey attempted to reach the same respondents on five occasions. The first round of talks took place in May and June 2020, shortly after the implementation of a strict lockdown.
Respondents in each of the interview rounds were asked about hunger in the seven days prior to the interviews, as well as whether they had enough money to eat in the month prior to the interviews. . This allowed us to have a perspective on the evolution of the situation of respondents and their households.
In all five surveys, we found that hunger levels were higher than before the first lockdown.
Initially, during the first round of interviews, many respondents indicated that they had no more money for food, but hunger affected fewer households. This may indicate that some households have managed to make ends meet in one way or another, at least to alleviate hunger. We saw some improvement in the second data collection period in July and August, after the first hard lockdown ended. This was due to the partial economic recovery, to the existing social allowance supplements and to the introduction of the new social assistance allowance in case of distress and the employer-employee temporary assistance program.
Food support from government, NGOs, and faith-based and community organizations has also been helpful.
But these positive effects did not last.
High hunger levels
As the figure below shows, food insecurity in terms of lack of money for food has decreased since the first lockdown. It was considerably lower in March 2021 than in April 2020. The initial sharp decline was also reflected in household and child hunger.
This was probably the effect of some improvement in the economy, as well as the government’s decision to supplement subsidies, the introduction of new subsidies and other support measures. Authors’ calculations based on NIDS-CRAM data.
In more recent interviews from our study, there has been a decrease in the number of households short of cash for food – but no decrease in hunger levels.
Underlying factors
In an attempt to manage public debt as well as the need to prioritize public health spending, the government began phasing out emergency social assistance and social insurance from October 2020.
By the end of April 2021, all forms of emergency aid had ceased. The below-inflation increases in social grants in April 2021 also eroded their value. This has been accompanied by declining levels of food aid to poor households provided by government, NGOs and community support systems.
The national school nutrition program is not operational in many parts of the country. It weakened the safety net. Millions of people were left destitute as unemployment rose.
Despite the low monetary value of the Social Relief of Distress grant (350 Rand or about USD 24 per month), it expanded temporary access to nearly 6 million unemployed people who were not eligible for unemployment benefits and the program. temporary employer-employee assistance. These benefits ended at the end of April 2021.
The researchers estimate that without the special grant to help people in distress over the past 12 months, poverty would have been 5% higher among the poorest households and income inequality would have been between 1.3% and 6, 3% higher. In addition, the subsidy increased the probability of looking for a job by 25 percentage points.
These underlying factors could explain much of the frustration that is expressed in communities across the country. It also shows that social protection and emergency aid can have important stabilizing effects on families and communities.
Without these measures, hunger would undoubtedly have been worse, with potential long-term consequences for children’s development and for social cohesion.
Grace Bridgman, a doctoral student at Stellenbosch University specializing in spatial inequalities, child hunger and development economics, was part of the research team.
Servaas van der Berg receives funding from the National Research Foundation and undertakes research for various government departments.
Leila Patel receives funding from the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation for her chair in welfare and social development.
By Servaas van der Berg, Professor of Economics and South African Research Chair in Economics of Social Policy, University of Stellenbosch And
Leila Patel, Professor of Social Development Studies, University of Johannesburg
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