Dataset Information

Implications of COVID-19 labour market shock for child and household hungers in South Africa: Do social protection programs protect?'

ABSTRACT:

Background

Recent studies have confirmed that the COVID-19 lockdown has caused massive job losses. However, the impact of this loss on food security is not well-understood. Moreover, a paucity of evidence exists regarding social protection grants' countervailing effects against such shocks. This study examined the effects of job loss (labour income loss) on child and household hungers (our two measures food insecurity) during COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. It also ascertained whether these effect were offset by alternative social grant programs to document the protective role of the latter.

Data and methods

We used South Africa's National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) and the Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (CRAM) data. These data cover a nationally representative sample of 7073 individuals. We employed a probit model to estimate the effect of job loss and receipts of various social grants on child and households' hungers. We also estimated the double-selection logit model to account for the model's uncertainty surrounding the variable selection and treatment-effects estimation using lasso (Telasso) for causal inference of our analysis.

Results

Our analyses showed that households exposed to a labour market shock during the pandemic experienced a significant increase in our measures of food insecurity (child and household hungers). Specifically, we found that compared with households containing employed respondents, households with respondents who lost their jobs due to COVID-19 lockdown were 5.4% more likely to report child hunger and 2.6% more likely to report household hunger in the past seven days A receipt of child support grant reduces the likelihood of reporting child hunger and household hunger by 21.7%and 16.9% respectively among these households. A receipt of old age pension grant reduces the likelihood of reporting household hunger by 24% with no significant effect on child hunger.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 lockdown resulted in unprecedent job losses with significant implications for food insecurity. Job loss due to COVID-19 lockdown significantly increased food insecurity in South Africa. Receipts of social grants effectively offset this adverse effect. The protective effect of the social grant is heterogenous across its alternative programs (child support grant and old age pension grant) and food insecurity, suggesting the differences in the size of transfers and motivations for sending these transfers.

SUBMITTER: Gelo D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9249193 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundSouth Africa has a dual system of healthcare model differentiated across socio-economic lines. While on the one hand there exists high quality private facilities that is expensive and accessible to the minority, on the other is the free but stretched and over-crowded public healthcare that the rest of the population relies on. Accessing private facilities requires private medical insurance or requires coping strategies that can lead to household vulnerability.ObjectiveThe objective of this study is to analyse the relationship between health shocks and household vulnerability in the South African context of high poverty and low medical insurance penetration rate.DataThe study employs data from waves three to five of South Africa's nationally representative National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) conducted between the period 2012-2017 in approximately two-year intervals.MethodsUsing food expenditure shock as an indicator for vulnerability, the study utilises a range of econometric techniques from panel logit regression to quasi-experimental design based difference in difference regressions to assess the association between health shocks, medical insurance and household vulnerability.FindingsThe main finding of the study is that a significant proportion of households in the upper income quintile utilise private healthcare even when not covered by private medical insurance. This preference for private over public health facilities make them vulnerable to health shocks as they cope by sacrificing food consumption to incur additional health expenditure. In contrast, lower income households that are unable to access the high-cost private healthcare tend to rely on the strained public healthcare system. They are not able to use their constrained food expenditure as a coping strategy for private or out-of-pocket medical expenses because their food consumption is already at a bare minimum.ConclusionThe results confirm that access to quality healthcare is a privilege in South Africa, available only to the minority of the population. The study paints a grim picture of household vulnerability in South Africa and underlines the need for a National Health Insurance that would enable universal access to quality healthcare in the country.