Trends in the working poverty rate (WPR) in post-apartheid South Africa, 1997–2012
- Rogan, Michael, Reynolds, John
- Authors: Rogan, Michael , Reynolds, John
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/478117 , vital:78156 , https://doi.org/10.1080/0376835X.2019.1590181
- Description: As South Africa prepares to implement a national minimum wage for the first time, a number of questions about the potential benefits of a minimum wage have emerged. However, most of the South African literature, to date, has been concerned with the country's high unemployment rate and not on the quality of employment. In particular, there has been very little attention given to one widely used indicator of decent work, the working poverty rate (WPR). Using the October and General Household Surveys, we present an analysis of trends in working poverty over most of the post-apartheid period (from 1997 to 2012). The findings reveal that, while income poverty has decreased, poverty among the employed is a persistent feature of the post-apartheid period and that the contributions of earnings from employment to overall poverty reduction have been disappointing.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
- Authors: Rogan, Michael , Reynolds, John
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/478117 , vital:78156 , https://doi.org/10.1080/0376835X.2019.1590181
- Description: As South Africa prepares to implement a national minimum wage for the first time, a number of questions about the potential benefits of a minimum wage have emerged. However, most of the South African literature, to date, has been concerned with the country's high unemployment rate and not on the quality of employment. In particular, there has been very little attention given to one widely used indicator of decent work, the working poverty rate (WPR). Using the October and General Household Surveys, we present an analysis of trends in working poverty over most of the post-apartheid period (from 1997 to 2012). The findings reveal that, while income poverty has decreased, poverty among the employed is a persistent feature of the post-apartheid period and that the contributions of earnings from employment to overall poverty reduction have been disappointing.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Meeting food security needs in very poor households in the Eastern Cape: The role of own agricultural production
- Rogan, Michael, Reynolds, John
- Authors: Rogan, Michael , Reynolds, John
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/477973 , vital:78142
- Description: Small-scale agriculture evokes strong views in terms of both its current and potential roles in rural development. We examine how many (or few) Black households in rural areas that are identified as ‘food poor’in terms of their income levels are able to meet their basic food needs–and the role of household agricultural production. We find that although rural households engaged in some form of farming are more likely to be very poor in terms of their incomes, they actually experience hunger less frequently than non-farming households.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
- Authors: Rogan, Michael , Reynolds, John
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/477973 , vital:78142
- Description: Small-scale agriculture evokes strong views in terms of both its current and potential roles in rural development. We examine how many (or few) Black households in rural areas that are identified as ‘food poor’in terms of their income levels are able to meet their basic food needs–and the role of household agricultural production. We find that although rural households engaged in some form of farming are more likely to be very poor in terms of their incomes, they actually experience hunger less frequently than non-farming households.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
Schooling inequality, higher education and the labour market: evidence from a graduate tracer study in the Eastern Cape, South Africa
- Rogan, Michael, Reynolds, John
- Authors: Rogan, Michael , Reynolds, John
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Educational equalization -- South Africa Education, Higher -- South Africa College graduates -- Employment -- South Africa College majors -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Book , Text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3104 , vital:20369 , ISBN 9780868106045
- Description: This study attempts to link schooling, demographic, socio-economic and academic factors to firstchoice degree completion and labour market outcomes. More specifically, this study investigates those factors that are most directly associated with whether the degrees that university graduates obtain reflect their first qualification choices, and also examines the effects of those factors and degree types on labour market outcomes. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section reviews the literature on the transition from schooling to higher education in South Africa with a particular focus on programme choice, followed by the recent literature on graduate employment and unemployment, and the broad findings of the graduate tracer studies which have been conducted in South Africa to date. Section three describes the graduate tracer study design and the analysis upon which the empirical section of the paper is based. In section four, the results of the descriptive statistics and a multivariate analysis are presented in two parts. Finally, section five discusses the results and reflects on the implications for higher education in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Rogan, Michael , Reynolds, John
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Educational equalization -- South Africa Education, Higher -- South Africa College graduates -- Employment -- South Africa College majors -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Book , Text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3104 , vital:20369 , ISBN 9780868106045
- Description: This study attempts to link schooling, demographic, socio-economic and academic factors to firstchoice degree completion and labour market outcomes. More specifically, this study investigates those factors that are most directly associated with whether the degrees that university graduates obtain reflect their first qualification choices, and also examines the effects of those factors and degree types on labour market outcomes. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section reviews the literature on the transition from schooling to higher education in South Africa with a particular focus on programme choice, followed by the recent literature on graduate employment and unemployment, and the broad findings of the graduate tracer studies which have been conducted in South Africa to date. Section three describes the graduate tracer study design and the analysis upon which the empirical section of the paper is based. In section four, the results of the descriptive statistics and a multivariate analysis are presented in two parts. Finally, section five discusses the results and reflects on the implications for higher education in South Africa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
The working poor in South Africa, 1997-2012
- Rogan, Michael, Reynolds, John
- Authors: Rogan, Michael , Reynolds, John
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Income distribution -- South Africa Working poor -- South Africa Income -- South Africa South Africa -- Social policy Public welfare -- South Africa Grants-in-aid -- South Africa Household surveys -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Book , Text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3115 , vital:20370 , ISBN 9780868106069
- Description: Despite the intentions of government and commitments by its social partners, South Africa continues to experience one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world and almost half of its households live below the minimum living level used by the National Planning Commission. Persistent calls for deregulation and lower wages to encourage job creation have been countered by arguments that the depth of income poverty and the extent of income inequality require consolidation and deepening of gains made by working people since 1994 and as expected in terms of international commitment to the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO’s) Decent Work Agenda. It is in this context that we undertake a closer examination of the shifts in the patterns of working poverty over the period 1997-2012. Challenges in calculating the rate of working poverty include defining the poverty line(s) to be used, and linking data on household incomes and individual employment status. We analyse data collected by Statistics South Africa through its October Household Surveys in 1997-1999 and General Household Surveys in 2004-2012, to examine trends in the rates of working poverty at various poverty lines, as well as trends in respect of employment amongst the poor, the depth of poverty, sources of income, and selected aspects of household composition. Our analysis shows that although the rate of working poverty decreased during the period under examination, 14% of workers still lived in households below the lower bound official poverty line, more than a fifth lived below the upper bound official poverty line, and more than a third of workers lived in households with just enough income to cover the minimum of their most basic needs. The poverty gap decreased for the working poor and for the poor in general, with the expansion of social grants in the early 2000s playing a role. We find that changes in the labour market over the post-apartheid period have not added appreciably to the demonstrable income effects achieved through the expansion of the social grant system. The implications of these findings for labour market regulation and social policy are briefly considered.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
- Authors: Rogan, Michael , Reynolds, John
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Income distribution -- South Africa Working poor -- South Africa Income -- South Africa South Africa -- Social policy Public welfare -- South Africa Grants-in-aid -- South Africa Household surveys -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Book , Text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3115 , vital:20370 , ISBN 9780868106069
- Description: Despite the intentions of government and commitments by its social partners, South Africa continues to experience one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world and almost half of its households live below the minimum living level used by the National Planning Commission. Persistent calls for deregulation and lower wages to encourage job creation have been countered by arguments that the depth of income poverty and the extent of income inequality require consolidation and deepening of gains made by working people since 1994 and as expected in terms of international commitment to the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO’s) Decent Work Agenda. It is in this context that we undertake a closer examination of the shifts in the patterns of working poverty over the period 1997-2012. Challenges in calculating the rate of working poverty include defining the poverty line(s) to be used, and linking data on household incomes and individual employment status. We analyse data collected by Statistics South Africa through its October Household Surveys in 1997-1999 and General Household Surveys in 2004-2012, to examine trends in the rates of working poverty at various poverty lines, as well as trends in respect of employment amongst the poor, the depth of poverty, sources of income, and selected aspects of household composition. Our analysis shows that although the rate of working poverty decreased during the period under examination, 14% of workers still lived in households below the lower bound official poverty line, more than a fifth lived below the upper bound official poverty line, and more than a third of workers lived in households with just enough income to cover the minimum of their most basic needs. The poverty gap decreased for the working poor and for the poor in general, with the expansion of social grants in the early 2000s playing a role. We find that changes in the labour market over the post-apartheid period have not added appreciably to the demonstrable income effects achieved through the expansion of the social grant system. The implications of these findings for labour market regulation and social policy are briefly considered.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Challenging hegemony? : a provincial perspective on the limits of policy challenge in the South African state
- Authors: Reynolds, John
- Date: 2014 , 2014-06-24
- Subjects: Community development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 1994-
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:3372 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013031
- Description: This thesis provides a provincial perspective on the limits of policy challenge within the post-apartheid South African state. This perspective is located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, which is one of the poorest of the nine provinces into which the national territory was divided during the constitutional negotiations prior to the landmark democratic elections of 1994. The empirical foundation for this perspective is an analysis of the process of developing the Eastern Cape Provincial Growth and Development Plan 2004-2014 (PGDP), which took place in 2002-2004. Starting with a broader theoretical discussion, followed by a brief contextual analysis of the South African economy, the structure of the post-apartheid South African state, and key growth and development policies, the more detailed engagement with the PGDP process is undertaken. Drawing on Jessop’s (2008) strategic-relational approach, this thesis argues that the PGDP process arose within a particular spatio-temporal context where new opportunities for policy challenge were possible, but that such challenge had to be negotiated on a strategically selective terrain on which that challenge was neutralised. The PGDP process unfolded as a complex dialectic of agency and a range of path-dependent institutional processes with varying temporal and spatial horizons (cf. Pierson, 2004, 2005) in which no particular outcomes were guaranteed, but in terms of which some outcomes were more likely than others. Although the organisation of state power was expressed in the content of the PGDP, that power had to be understood as fractured across a range of state and non-state institutions, but with the state as the primary site of the contingent organisation of power. The provincial sphere of government faces particular constraints with the South African state, which has implications for its policy scope and the possibilities of policy challenge, even where wider social support is achieved.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
- Authors: Reynolds, John
- Date: 2014 , 2014-06-24
- Subjects: Community development -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 1994-
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:3372 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013031
- Description: This thesis provides a provincial perspective on the limits of policy challenge within the post-apartheid South African state. This perspective is located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, which is one of the poorest of the nine provinces into which the national territory was divided during the constitutional negotiations prior to the landmark democratic elections of 1994. The empirical foundation for this perspective is an analysis of the process of developing the Eastern Cape Provincial Growth and Development Plan 2004-2014 (PGDP), which took place in 2002-2004. Starting with a broader theoretical discussion, followed by a brief contextual analysis of the South African economy, the structure of the post-apartheid South African state, and key growth and development policies, the more detailed engagement with the PGDP process is undertaken. Drawing on Jessop’s (2008) strategic-relational approach, this thesis argues that the PGDP process arose within a particular spatio-temporal context where new opportunities for policy challenge were possible, but that such challenge had to be negotiated on a strategically selective terrain on which that challenge was neutralised. The PGDP process unfolded as a complex dialectic of agency and a range of path-dependent institutional processes with varying temporal and spatial horizons (cf. Pierson, 2004, 2005) in which no particular outcomes were guaranteed, but in terms of which some outcomes were more likely than others. Although the organisation of state power was expressed in the content of the PGDP, that power had to be understood as fractured across a range of state and non-state institutions, but with the state as the primary site of the contingent organisation of power. The provincial sphere of government faces particular constraints with the South African state, which has implications for its policy scope and the possibilities of policy challenge, even where wider social support is achieved.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
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