Strengthening Intergenerational Solidarity in South Africa: Closing the Gaps in the Social Security System for Unemployed Youth—A Case Study of the “Perverse Incentive”

Abstract

For many decades, the top generation of social pensioners, mainly older women, have represented the main income earners for poor South African households whose working-age members cannot find employment. Since the introduction of the child support grant in 1998, the younger and middle generations of women have increasingly come to share the financial burden in poor households. However, able-bodied male household members who are unemployed fall through the social security net and remain financially dependent unless they can access a disability grant. The paper provides an overview of South Africa's social security system and its impact on intergenerational solidarity. It also reports a study of the ‘perverse incentive’ that explores the motivations for youth to fraudulently access social assistance in order to contribute to family welfare. The survey results are supportive of calls to reconsider welfare reform to fill the gaps in South Africa's social security net.

KEYWORDS:

• intergenerational solidarity
• poverty
• social assistance
• social grants
• perverse incentive
• amoral familism
• South Africa

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 4th World Ageing & Generations Congress, St. Gallen, Switzerland, August 28–30, 2008, in a special session on “Intergenerational Solidarity and Old Age Support in Africa and Asia: What Roles for Family and State?” The case study reported was financially supported by a South Africa–Netherlands Programme for Alternatives in Development (SANPAD) grant and carried out in collaboration with colleagues at Rhodes University (Ida Erstad and Tinashe Ndoro) and the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam (Harry Finkenflügel, Anna Nieboer and Jane Cramm). Sarah Radloff, head of Rhodes University's Statistics Department, assisted with data processing. Rhodes University granted ethical approval. Fieldwork was commissioned to Development Research Africa. A special debt is owed to Francie Lund for her insights on the planning and implementation of the child support grant. Anonymous reviewers provided useful comments. While this assistance is gratefully acknowledged, the views expressed are the author's and should not be attributed to a sponsor or colleagues.

Notes

1. Other social grants that benefit fewer people include the foster care grant and the care dependency grant. The foster care grant is available, but not automatically, to families who foster children under 18 years of age. The care dependency grant assists parents of a disabled child (0–18 years) who requires care at home by another person. Thereafter application must be made for the adult disability grant.

2. In 2010, children up to 15 years will be eligible to receive the child support grant.

3. Lund (2008) points out that means-testing is also demeaning and wasteful of time of beneficiaries and administrative capacity of government.

4. I am grateful to Francis Wilson for sharing this insight with me in 2002.

5. At the time of the discussion, it was reported in the media that individuals infected with TB were selling “cough bottles.” Subsequently, a hospital spokesperson in the Eastern Cape stated that his hospital had stopped this practice long ago by requiring people to do the sputum test in the hospital under supervision.

6. The value of the disability grant in the first half of 2006. Its value had increased to R870 by late 2007, when the community study was underway.

7. The six options included a serious road accident, an unwanted pregnancy, assault/rape, TB infection, HIV infection, and a prison sentence.

8. The rate of TB co-infection with HIV is 59% in the Eastern Cape Province (South African Institute of Race Relations, 2008).

9. The researchers had expected that this certainty might be diluted by 2007 after the media had announced fatalities from extremely drug-resistant strains of TB (XDR-TB).