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Abstract
South African youth experience extremely high levels of unemployment and poverty. Currently there is no social assistance for low-income young adults in South Africa unless they are disabled. Interventions are needed that can achieve widespread poverty alleviation, as well as help facilitate economic participation to improve lifelong earnings. In this article, six examples of social security policy options are considered, including five grants ranging from an unconditional non-means-tested grant for young people to a conditional grant for young people in training or education, plus an ‘Opportunities voucher’ that is administered through the social security system but paid out to organisations offering youth education or work opportunities. Using a tax and benefit microsimulation model to simulate the five grants, we estimate the potential numbers reached and cost, as well as the impact of these six options on poverty.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the South African Department of Social Development. The results in this paper do not necessarily represent the views of the Department.
Notes
4SAMOD (The University of Oxford, The Department of Social Development of the Government of the Republic of South Africa and The University of Essex 2008) was developed using the EUROMOD framework. EUROMOD is a tax-benefit model for the European Union, supported by European Commission funding, developed by a large consortium of European researchers and coordinated by Holly Sutherland at the University of Essex.