IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ldr/wpaper/174.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The dynamics of poverty in the first four waves of NIDS

Author

Listed:
  • Arden Finn

    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.)

  • Murray Leibbrandt

    (Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.)

Abstract

We analyse the determinants of South Africans moving into and out of poverty over the first four waves of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) for the years 2008 to 2014/2015. We focus on the balanced panel of NIDS respondents and find that a relatively high poverty exit rate was accompanied by a substantial proportion of the population being trapped in severe poverty. The roles of demographic versus income changes over time reveal that changing household composition is the largest trigger of poverty entry and exit, and that increasing income from government grants is the main trigger precipitating poverty exit for about one quarter of our sample. Regression analysis shows that access to the labour market within the household is the single most important determinant of poverty entry and exit after race. We calculate multidimensional poverty rates and find that although MPI poverty is far lower than money-metric poverty, being chronically MPI poor over the four waves is closely matched by being chronically income poor.

Suggested Citation

  • Arden Finn & Murray Leibbrandt, 2016. "The dynamics of poverty in the first four waves of NIDS," SALDRU Working Papers 174, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
  • Handle: RePEc:ldr:wpaper:174
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://opensaldru.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11090/824/2016_174_Saldruwp.pdf?sequence=1
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Josh Budlender & Murray Leibbrandt & Ingrid Woolard, 2015. "South African poverty lines: a review and two new money-metric thresholds," SALDRU Working Papers 151, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    2. Ingrid Woolard & Stephan Klasen, 2005. "Determinants of Income Mobility and Household Poverty Dynamics in South Africa," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(5), pages 865-897.
    3. Alkire, Sabina & Foster, James, 2011. "Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 476-487.
    4. Jorge Agüero & Michael R. Carter & Julian May, 2007. "Poverty and Inequality in the First Decade of South Africa's Democracy: What can be Learnt from Panel Data from KwaZulu-Natal?," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 16(5), pages 782-812, November.
    5. Jenkins, Stephen P., 2011. "Changing Fortunes: Income Mobility and Poverty Dynamics in Britain," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199226436.
    6. Özler, Berk, 2007. "Not Separate, Not Equal: Poverty and Inequality in Post-apartheid South Africa," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(3), pages 487-529, April.
    7. Murray Leibbrandt & Ingrid Woolard & Arden Finn & Jonathan Argent, 2010. "Trends in South African Income Distribution and Poverty since the Fall of Apartheid," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 101, OECD Publishing.
    8. Finn, Arden & Leibbrandt, Murray, 2013. "The dynamics of poverty in the first three waves of NIDS," SALDRU Working Papers 119, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Simone Schotte & Rocco Zizzamia & Murray Leibbrandt, 2022. "Snakes and ladders and loaded dice: Poverty dynamics and inequality in South Africa between 2008 and 2017," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 90(2), pages 214-242, June.
    2. Gemma Wright & Helen Barnes & Michael Noble & David McLennan & Faith Masekesa, 2018. "Assessing the quality of the income data used in SAMOD, a South African tax-benefit microsimulation model," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-173, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    3. Helen Barnes & Gemma Wright & Michael Noble & David McLennan & Faith Masekesa, 2018. "Assessing the quality of the income data used in SAMOD, a South African tax-benefit microsimulation model," WIDER Working Paper Series 173, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Marisa von Fintel, 2021. "Chronic Child Poverty and Health Outcomes in South Africa Using a Multidimensional Poverty Measure," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(4), pages 1571-1596, August.
    5. Simone Schotte & Rocco Zizzamia & Murray Leibbrandt, 2017. "Social stratification, life chances and vulnerability to poverty in South Africa," SALDRU Working Papers 208, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    6. Wynnona Steyn & Alexius Sithole & Winile Ngobeni & Eva Muwanga-Zake & Helen Barnes & Michael Noble & David McLennan & Gemma Wright & Katrin Gasior, 2021. "Simulating personal income tax in South Africa using administrative data and survey data: A comparison of PITMOD and SAMOD for tax year 2018," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-120, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rocco Zizzamia & Simone Schotte & Murray Leibbrandt, 2019. "Snakes and ladders and loaded dice: Poverty dynamics and inequality in South Africa, 2008-2017," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-25, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Finn, Arden & Leibbrandt, Murray, 2013. "The dynamics of poverty in the first three waves of NIDS," SALDRU Working Papers 119, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    3. Marisa Fintel & Asmus Zoch & Servaas Berg, 2017. "The Dynamics of Child Poverty in South Africa Between 2008 and 2012," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 10(4), pages 945-969, December.
    4. Marisa von Fintel & Asmus Zoch, 2015. "The dynamics of child poverty in South Africa between 2008 and 2012: An analysis using the National Income Dynamics Study," Working Papers 05/2015, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    5. Simone Schotte & Rocco Zizzamia & Murray Leibbrandt, 2022. "Snakes and ladders and loaded dice: Poverty dynamics and inequality in South Africa between 2008 and 2017," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 90(2), pages 214-242, June.
    6. Finn, Arden & Leibbrandt, Murray, 2013. "Mobility and Inequality in the First Three Waves of NIDS," SALDRU Working Papers 120, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    7. Tobias Lechtenfeld & Asmus Zoch, 2014. "Income Convergence in South Africa: Fact or Measurement Error?," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 157, Courant Research Centre PEG.
    8. Kehinde O. Omotoso & Steven F. Koch, 2017. "Exploring Child Poverty and Inequality in Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Multidimensional Perspective," Working Papers 201718, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    9. Ivan Turok & Joshua Budlender & Justin Visagie, 2018. "Urban “slums” and social mobility," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 36(6), pages 703-725, October.
    10. Perugini, Cristiano, 2020. "Patterns and drivers of household income dynamics in Russia: The role of access to credit," BOFIT Discussion Papers 11/2020, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    11. Murray Leibbrandt & James Levinsohn, 2014. "Fifteen Years On: Household Incomes in South Africa," NBER Chapters, in: African Successes, Volume I: Government and Institutions, pages 333-355, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Carlos Gradín, 2013. "Race, Poverty and Deprivation in South Africa," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 22(2), pages 187-238, March.
    13. Florent Dubois & Christophe Muller, 2020. "The Contribution of Residential Segregation to Racial Income Gaps: Evidence from South Africa," AMSE Working Papers 2029, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    14. Arden Finn, 2015. "A National Minimum Wage in the Context of the South African Labour Market," SALDRU Working Papers 153, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    15. Ronelle Burger & Servaas Berg & Sarel Walt & Derek Yu, 2017. "The Long Walk: Considering the Enduring Spatial and Racial Dimensions of Deprivation Two Decades After the Fall of Apartheid," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 1101-1123, February.
    16. Oyvat, Cem, 2016. "Agrarian Structures, Urbanization, and Inequality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 207-230.
    17. Giorgio d’Agostino & Margherita Scarlato & Silvia Napolitano, 2018. "Do Cash Transfers Promote Food Security? The Case of the South African Child Support Grant," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 27(4), pages 430-456.
    18. Perugini, Cristiano, 2020. "Patterns and drivers of household income dynamics in Russia : The role of access to credit," BOFIT Discussion Papers 11/2020, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    19. repec:zbw:bofitp:2020_011 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Hai‐Anh H. Dang & Peter F. Lanjouw, 2023. "Measuring Poverty Dynamics with Synthetic Panels Based on Repeated Cross Sections," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 85(3), pages 599-622, June.
    21. Haroon Bhorat & Kezia Lilenstein & Morne Oosthuizen & Amy Thornton, 2016. "Vulnerability In Employment: Evidence from South Africa," Working Papers 201604, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.

    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:ldr:wpaper:174. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Alison Siljeur (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sauctza.html .

    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.