The South African Child Support Grant

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The South African Child Support Grant

• Francie Lund
• School of Development Studies
• University of KwaZulu-Natal
• Presentation to Social Work 1V Research Methods
  March 2007

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The Child Support Grant

• In 1996, the South African government introduced
  a policy reform for the support of children in
  poor households
• - from birth to seventh birthday
• - means tested (income less than R1100 a month
  in rural areas, R800 in urban areas)
• - payable monthly to a primary care giver
• Policy decision was strongly influenced by what
  was known of other grants

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Universal concerns about welfare spending, and
cash transfers in particular

• There are many strongly held beliefs about the
  CSG (and about welfare spending generally)
• Wasteful, non-productive, creates dependency
• And in particular
• Unemployment benefits will lead to idleness
• Households will split
• People will get pregnant to get the grants
• Higher fertility as barrier to development
• Especial concern re teenage pregnancy
• Concerns about increase in permissive behaviour
• We will come back to these.

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Violins story

• At PSLSD Quantitative Survey, 1993, she was
  recorded as aged 58, widowed, and unemployed.
• At KIDS Quantitative survey in 1998, she was
  recorded as aged 63, widowed, unemployed, and
  receiving the state non-contributory Old Age
  Pension.
• We visited in 2001 with qualitative study.

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What Violin told us that she does

• In the dry winter months, she is a specialist mud
  plasterer of houses. She tells no-one of her
  unique recipe for sand-cement mix that makes her
  the specialist.
• She employs a young man to drive the span of oxen
  to get the river sand for the plaster mix.
• For many years she has sewn and sold dresses
  (pinafores) with a machine brought for her by
  her late husband.
• She uses her state pension money to buy the bolts
  of material (used husbands pension money for
  this before he died).
• She sews in the summer months, employing other
  women to help her when she gets a big order.
• She employs a woman to work her fields,
  on-and-off in winter while she plasters, but
  nearly every day in summer.
• Neighbours helped her build her 3-roomed house
  she paid them with dresses.
• She also collects and sells firewood, sometimes
  paying someone cash to help with chopping, other
  times making an ilimo (traditional work group)
  she then brews Zulu beer as payment.

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Outline

• Why the CSG? Why a cash transfer?
• What we know about coverage and impact of other
  cash transfers?
• What do we know (so far) about the performance of
  the CSG?

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Different policies are designedto meet different
purposes

• Child and family policies could be
• Keep family unit together (general aim)
• Increase number of children (France)
• Decrease or limit number of children (China)
• Increase school attendance of children
  (Oportunidades in Mexico)
• Provide for substitute home-based parental care
  the Foster Care Grant in South Africa
• Reduce poverty experienced by children (CSG in
  SA)

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Stylised characteristics of African family life
in South Africa

• Single parenthood
• High proportion of children living with mothers
  only, and not living with either parent
• Men having dual families one urban one rural
• Some polygamy
• Extended families three or four generations
• Skip generations
• HOUSEHOLD BOUNDARIES ARE
• OPEN, AND FLUID

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Good impacts of the OAP and DGinfluenced the
policy decision for a CSG

• Secures the position of the elderly and people
  with disabilities
• Enables care of others (Lund 2002)
• Household income smoothing
• Where there is pooling, better health status for
  other members (Case)
• Pay for educational costs of children (Case and
  Deaton)
• Small enterprise development

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The CSG

• As expected, after a slow start, now reaches more
  than 7 million children (S-shaped curve)
• Age has been extended to 14
• Reaches rural and urban areas
• Many bureaucratic obstacles, formal and informal
• We know that it is getting out there (coverage),
  but what is its IMPACT?

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Research on the CSG all the findings go in the
same direction

• Still barriers of access for many individuals
• But 7 million grants in eight years
• Well targeted for poverty
• Most primary caregivers are mothers
• Good effects on school enrolment
• Unexpected finding the importance of the
  presence of the biological mother in the
  household

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The Africa Centre and itsDemographic Information
System (ACDIS)

• In the Mkhanyakude District, Hlabisa, northern
  KwaZulu-Natal
• Routine census in more than 11 000 households in
  the Demographic Surveillance Area (DSA)
• Child Grant module added to the census in early
  2002
• CSG had been gazetted in April 1998
• Paper appears as Case, Hosegood and Lund

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The significance of this Hlabisa area

• Very rural
• Predominantly African
• Very poor
• High burden of disease, associated with HIV/AIDS
• High rates of migration
• Thus precisely the kind of area for which the CSG
  was intended

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The survey size and focus

• 11178 households answered the questionnaire
• 3615 HHs (32) were holding or had applied for
  (reported) 6039 child-oriented grants
• Overwhelming majority (94) were CSGs (not Foster
  Care or Care Dependency)
• In this paper we deal with the 12865 children
  aged 0 to 7 who were resident on January 1 2002,
  of whom
• - 4684 had a CSG (not the other two grants)
  reported on their behalf
• - and of these, 3754 (80.1) were actively
  receiving a CSG.

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The good news is

• About one third of age eligible resident children
  in the area were receiving the Child Support
  Grant
• The vast majority of the primary caregivers were
  biological mothers
• The grant appeared to be well targeted for
  children in poorer households
• About half of those who applied for the child
  support grant, got it within three months of
  applying
• There are worrying results as well

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• We compare the sample means for children, and for
  the households in which they live, and we explore
  what variables will predict whether the child
  will get access to the grant
• Parents can be classified as
• resident
• non-resident
• dead
• none of the above - unknown or missing

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Table 1 Mean characteristics of children less
than 7( denotes the difference in means between
samples is significant at 1 level)
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Table 1 continued ( denotes the difference in
means between samples is significant at 1 level)
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Who are the primary caregivers?

• The idea of primary care giver was an
  international
• breakthrough in child policy in order to reach
  out to children, do not restrict the grant to
  biological parent
• In the DSA
• 87 are resident mothers
• 10 are grandmothers
• 1 are aunts
• 0.2 are fathers, and there were two other men

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Multiple grantholding

• Number of grantholders
• 2238
• 796
• 174
• 12

• Number of grants held
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4

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Assessment of targeting

• Over 80 of children over aged one 1 for whom an
  enquiry had been made, were receiving the grant
• Very few applicants had been rejected
• Could this be because officials are just giving
  grants to anyone who applies?
• What do you do when there are no reliable
  measures of income?
• But three variables which are known to be related
  to poverty are in ACDIS data
• education level of mother and father
• employment status of mother and father
• household ownership of a bundle of assets

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Targeting results

• There is a significant association for all three
  variables.
• Both mothers and fathers of grant-reporting
  children have lower levels of education than the
  mothers and fathers of children for whom grants
  are not reported
• Both mothers and fathers of grant-reporting
  children are more likely to be unemployed, or in
  part-time employment, than the mothers and
  fathers of children for whom grants are not
  reported
• There is a slight but significant difference in
  the mean ownership of numbers of assets between
  the samples.
• There is a very strong separately and jointly
  significant difference between samples in
  ownership of a selection of luxury assets, such
  as car, hot water geyser, refrigerator,
  television.

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Really worrying findings

• There are still eligible children who do not get
  the CSG.
• There are large numbers of children who should be
  getting the Care Dependency Grants, and Foster
  Care Grants with one or both parents dead, it
  makes processing these very difficult indeed.
• The biggest single predictor of whether a child
  would have a grant reported for it was the
  presence of the childs own mother.

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• Why are other non-maternal carers not applying
  for the CSG?
• The CSG has been extended. The older children
  get, the fewer live with their mothers.
• CSG money spent on educational expenses.

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The need for and difficulty of impact assessment

• CSG is a relatively small amount, compared to Old
  Age Pension and Disability Grant which have
  both also been extended
• HIV/ AIDS is changing the way that households are
  spending for example, health costs, and funeral
  costs
• It is also changing the way that people are
  earning
• As well as what people are doing (going to
  school, being absent from work through illness
• Difficult if not impossible to capture the
  influence of the CSG
• The CSG is being extended to 14 years of age

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So, back to beliefs about the influence of cash
transfers
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National and provincial expenditure
estimates2001/ 02
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Composition of income in South African income
deciles (RSA, 2001)
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Time to receipt

• Some of the questions on administration did not
  work well.
• Especially when the primary care giver was not
  the respondent people had no knowledge of the
  in-between steps, they knew only of when the CSG
  arrived.
• Nevertheless
• The results are reported in units of one quarter
  of a year.

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The takeup rate

• The rate of take-up of new programmes can be
  expected to resemble a forward-leaning S-shaped
  curve
• a slow start
• a rapid increase as the programme takes
• a plateau as it matures

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