Race, Culture, and Identity

Gender-based Household Compositional Changes and Implications for Poverty in South Africa

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Poverty is one of the most challenging socio-economic problems in South Africa. Though
poverty rates have been substantially reduced in the post-apartheid period, many South Africans
remain poor. Available evidence also indicates a substantial gender gradient to the prevalence of
poverty in the country. A standard indicator of gendered power structures is the gender of the
household head. We examine the effect of transitioning from a male- to a female-headed household
over time (relative to remaining in a male-headed household) on changes in the probability of
transitioning into poverty from a non-poor state over a two- to six-year period. This type of
longitudinal analysis is largely lacking in South Africa, where most previous studies have largely
focused on cross-sectional and repeated cross-sectional analyses. The results indicate that
transitioning from a male- to female-headed household is associated with an increase in the
probability of falling into poverty from a previous non-poor state. The results hold true across all
poverty lines and also indicate that the effect of gender-based transitions is not significant in the
short term (i.e. for the one-period transitions), but over more persistent transitions.

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Publication Information

: ., 2018

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Language

English

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Subject(s)

South Africa
Inequality
Household
Poverty transitions
Longitudinal survey
Gendered power structures
Socio-economic problems

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Article

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