Individuals’ experiences of multidimensional poverty through the lenses of gender and age – Findings from South Africa

It has been long established that age and gender affect individuals’ experiences of poverty. However, the analysis of their simultaneous impacts is rarely afforded due to data limitations. Utilising nationally representative data for South Africa, this paper presents the results of an intersectional analysis investigating how age and gender shape the experiences of multidimensional poverty in South Africa. These survey data were collected in 2019 as part of a program of testing a gender sensitive, individual-level measure of multidimensional poverty. These results demonstrate that at the highest level of analysis available, women are likely to be more multidimensionally deprived compared to men. However, detailed analyses at lower levels highlight the utility of such datasets for better understanding the deprivation profiles of different social groups. Of the dimensions examined in some detail, age appears the stronger driver of outcomes in the food, voice, education and work dimensions, while for the time use and environment dimensions gender is the stronger driver of outcomes, and age and gender are equally important influences on the clothing and footwear dimension. Collecting individual-level multidimensional information enables the interrogation of deprivations that are unique to certain groups, providing more nuanced understanding of the different experiences of multidimensional poverty, which have to date been largely invisible. Such information can be used in prioritising poverty reduction policies, with potentially important implications for their targeting and design – in particular, by considering multiple deprivations jointly, constraints and enablers can be considered for holistic and gendered policy responses.