Child support grants increase school enrolment in South Africa

Cash benefits for children are reducing the impact of poverty on school enrolment in South Africa. In KwaZulu-Natal, child support grants are helping children, particularly from the poorest families, to be educated. Families receiving such grants are more likely to send their children to school at earlier ages than other equally poor households. 

New non-conditional cash-based child support grants were introduced to South Africa in the late 1990’s. By 2002, parents or primary caregivers with a monthly income of less than R1100 were entitled to a monthly payment of R110 per child under the age of seven. By 2005, payments had risen to R180 per child under the age of 14. This choice of non-conditional cash benefits as a means of addressing child poverty was a new policy measure. Making grants accessible to caregivers other than a biological parent was also new.

Historically, the use of cash transfers by governments to tackle poverty was standard practise in advanced industrial countries, but was less common in lower- and middle-income countries. Using data from the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies, researchers from Princeton University, University of KwaZulu-Natal and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine assessed the reach and impact of child support grants, in the Umkhanyakude district of KwaZulu-Natal. This district is poor, largely rural and exactly the type of area that the grants are intended to reach.

The research finds that:

• Child support grants are taken up for a third of all eligible children in the area.
• They are reaching those with low parental education, and few household necessities (cookers, furniture, farm tools) and luxuries (refrigerators, TVs, computers, cars).
• Children receiving the grant are more likely to be those living with their mothers.
• Children who have lost their father are more likely to receive a grant than those who have lost a mother.
• Girls are not disadvantaged when applying for the grant. 
• Children receiving the grant are more likely to go to school at ages six and seven than are other children at same ages.
• Older siblings (for whom no grant existed when they were six or seven) were less likely to have attended school.

This provides evidence that the grants (and not other factors) have increased school enrolment. Furthermore, the finding that a higher percentage of grant-receiving children live with their mothers challenges the popular belief that mothers apply for child support grants and then leave their children in another’s care.

This study demonstrates the positive impact of child support grants on school enrolment in South Africa. It also reveals that many of the poorest children in KwaZulu-Natal are not receiving the grant they are entitled to.

The researchers suggest that it is important to:

• identify the barriers to receiving the grant
• understand why children with absent mothers are overlooked for the grant.

Source(s):
‘The reach and impact of Child Support Grants: evidence from KwaZulu-Natal’, Development Southern Africa (22) 4, pages 467-482, by Anne Case, Victoria Hosegood and Frances Lund, 2005

Funded by: UK Wellcome Trust, US National Institutes of Health, MacArthur Foundation

id21 Research Highlight: 28 April 2006

Further Information:
Anne Case
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
367 Wallace Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, N.J. 08544
USA

Tel: +1 609 258 2177
Fax: +1 609 258 5974
Contact the contributor: accase@princeton.edu

Princeton University

Other related links:
'Make childhood poverty history, id21 insights#56'

'Can social safety nets contribute to poverty reduction in Africa?'

'Cash transfers can reduce childhood poverty'

Social Assistance in Developing Countries Database from the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (PDF)