IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/deveza/v29y2012i1p141-156.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The fiscal cost of child grants in the context of high adult mortality in South Africa: A simulation to 2015

Author

Listed:
  • Hayley McEwen
  • Ingrid Woolard

Abstract

This paper investigates the expected costs of cash transfers to children in South Africa up to 2015. The child population is not expected to grow between 2008 and 2015 and thus the fiscal cost of the Child Support Grant is expected to stabilise in the near future. The other major child grant, the Foster Care Grant, is far less predictable -- while it is not intended to be an orphan grant, three quarters of its beneficiaries are orphans. Because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the number of dual orphans is expected to double between 2008 and 2015, reaching 1.3 million, and the overall number of orphans (maternal, paternal and dual) to reach 4.8 million by 2015. If the Foster Care Grant were to become a de facto orphan grant, its costs would escalate rapidly. The paper does not argue in favour of an orphan grant, but rather for greater effort in ensuring that the Child Support Grant reaches the neediest children, especially maternal orphans.

Suggested Citation

  • Hayley McEwen & Ingrid Woolard, 2012. "The fiscal cost of child grants in the context of high adult mortality in South Africa: A simulation to 2015," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(1), pages 141-156, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:29:y:2012:i:1:p:141-156
    DOI: 10.1080/0376835X.2012.645648
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0376835X.2012.645648
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0376835X.2012.645648?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:deveza:v:29:y:2012:i:1:p:141-156. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CDSA20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.