South Africa - Social Assistance Programs and Systems Review
Despite being an upper middle-income country, South Africa’s high inequality and the long-lasting legacies of apartheid mean that the country is faced with numerous development challenges, many of which are characteristic of countries with much low...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
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Washington, DC : World Bank
2022
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099845107152232177/P17217500b279506c0963d0954cdf9a47da http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37713 |
| Summary: | Despite being an upper middle-income
country, South Africa’s high inequality and the long-lasting
legacies of apartheid mean that the country is faced with
numerous development challenges, many of which are
characteristic of countries with much lower incomes. Poverty
and inequality remain two of the country’s most pressing
concerns. Alongside extreme inequalities, South Africa
struggles with high unemployment, low labour market
participation rates, and widespread poverty, including
pockets of deep deprivation. In this context, social
assistance is a critical policy response on the part of
government and represents one of the important successes of
the post-apartheid era. This report provides a review of the
South African social assistance system and consists of three
broad thrusts. First, the review provides a sense of the
operation of the social assistance system, the types of
benefits it provides through its key programmes, and the
tools and administrative systems that support its
functioning. Second, it reviews the performance of the
social assistance system in terms of coverage, targeting,
benefit incidence, adequacy, cost-effectiveness, and
outcomes. Third, it assesses the extent to which the system
is aligned and equipped to address the so-called “triple
challenge” of poverty, inequality, and unemployment as shown
by data, and reviews its limitations in the design, delivery
systems, and institutional coordination at different
administrative levels. The core focus of this paper is on
social assistance and, specifically, the system of social
grants in South Africa. |
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