Browsing by Author "Mabala, Moyahabo Thomas"

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    Factors associated with Social Grant uptake In South Africa: A Closer Look at the Special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant among the Youth Aged 18 – 35 Years
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Mabala, Moyahabo Thomas; De Wet-Billings, Nicole; Godongwana, Motlatso
    Background: Globally nearly 900 million people benefited from social assistance in 2017, most of them in the form of cash transfers, which accounts for 44% of the social assistance budget. During the same period, Sub-Saharan Africa was found to be far behind in terms of social assistance coverage, of those living in extreme poverty it is estimated that only 15% of them are receiving social assistance. In South Africa, with a population of 60 million people, it is estimated that 11.4 million of them received some sort of grant at the end of March 2021. When the Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant (SCSRDG) was introduced, it received over 9.5 million applications of which only 6.5 million were approved with the youth aged 18 – 34 accounting for 70% of the applicants. As a result of the high number of applicants for the SCSRDG, this study wanted to gain an understanding of the profiles of the applicants. Objective: To explore the demographic, socio-economic, and household factors associated with the uptake of the Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant (SCSRDG) among the youth aged 18 – 35 years in South Africa. Methodology: This study is a quantitative analysis of secondary data obtained from the National Income Dynamics Study – Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey 2020 wave 5. The survey interviewed 7074 youth aged between 18 – 35 years. The outcome variable of this study is the Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant (SCSRDG) receipt status. To assess the uptake of the grant, descriptive statistics including tables and graphs were used. The predictor variables consist of demographic, socioeconomic and household characteristics, with age as the main predictor variable. To check for the association between the outcome and predictor variables, binary logistic regression was utilised. Where the odd ratio < 1.00, meant that the outcome was less likely in the index group when compared to the reference. Results: Using the weighted data, a total of 3 438 046 applicants who applied for the grants received it while 3 003 320 of them did not receive the grant. Among those who received the grant, the majority 1 223 192 of them are aged between 21- 25 years. Most of the applicants were male representing 63.58%. African/Black is the highest population group that applied for the grant accounting for 90.66% of the applicants while whites account for the least proportion of the applicants at 0.88%. For both that received and did not receive the grant, the African/black population group is the highest when compared to other population groups at 92.93% and 88.07% respectively, while whites are the lowest at 1.31% and 0.40% respectively. Most of the applicants 91.47% were unemployed. A total of 4 994 322 (77.54%) of the applicants reported their dwelling type as formal and 4 891 137 (75.93) reported that they had access to both water and electricity in their household. Most applicants 39.98% come from a household with between 4 – 6 family members. Out of the 14 independent variables included in this study only two variables, marital status, and multiple grants recipients, were statistically significant. Females have a lower likelihood of receiving the grant when compared to males with an odd ratio of 0.6431 and 0.55637 using the unadjusted and adjusted binary regression model, respectively. Conclusion: This study has found that marital status and multiple grants recipients are the two characteristics that are associated with the uptake of the Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant among youth aged 18 – 35 years in South Africa. It found that males as compared to females are more likely to receive the SRD grant, this is because of the initial qualifying criteria that excluded a high number of females that were already receiving the Child Support Grant. This criterion was later changed to say that an applicant of the SCSRDG must not be entitled to a social grant for himself or herself.