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• Thinking through Globalization
• Mapping the World’s Agricultural Land
• Climbing out of Poverty in South Africa
• The Road Half Traveled

Almost a decade after all apartheid laws were repealed in South Africa, one in five households in KwaZulu-Natal province are caught in a poverty trap, according to IFPRI research findings presented to 50 national policymakers and researchers in Pretoria in October. To assist policymakers in reducing poverty in South Africa, IFPRI is looking at why some households in the province remain in poverty.

The IFPRI study in KwaZulu-Natal surveyed nearly 1,200 African and Indian households in 1993 and returned to the same households again in 1998 to examine how their fortunes had changed in the years since the first democratic elections open to all races were held in April 1994. One of nine South African provinces, KwaZulu-Natal is the home of approximately 9 million people, or 20 percent of the country's 44 million residents.

The study categorizes KwaZulu-Natal sample households into three groups: "chronic poor" (those below the poverty line in both 1993 and 1998); "transitory poor" (those who either climbed above or fell below the poverty line during the period); and "never poor" (those consistently above the poverty line). Twenty-three percent of the households in 1993 and 1998 were chronic poor, 29 percent were transitory poor—11 percent climbed above—18 percent fell below the poverty line during the study period, and 48 percent were never poor.

The findings highlight how the chronic poor and more than half the transitory poor were unable to accumulate enough assets to climb out of poverty during the study's five-year span. "IFPRI's work shows that policymakers need to design policies and programs that take into account the three different types of households, because their development requirements may differ," says John Maluccio, a research fellow at IFPRI.

In addition to examining the role of standard household assets such as physical and human capital, the study also took into consideration social capital, which refers in part to the networks people belong to. The thinking is that the poor are able to use these networks both to avoid falling behind and to get ahead. One measure of the networks at the household level is the extent to which household members participate in various types of associations such as financial and social groups within the community.

IFPRI's findings indicate that a doubling of KwaZulu-Natal's household membership in such groups increases income by almost 10 percent, about one-third of the gain that doubling education would have produced in 1998. Furthermore, social capital as measured here appears to be much more important in 1998 than in 1993, when there was both less of it and its apparent value to households was lower. Social capital may prove to be an important asset in escaping poverty in contemporary South Africa.

The study is the result of a four-year collaboration between IFPRI, the School of Development Studies at the University of Natal, South Africa, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States. Funding was provided by a number of donors, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, and the Development Bank of Southern Africa. The team continues work under a MacArthur Foundation grant to identify more specifically the constraints that keep KwaZulu-Natal residents from escaping poverty.

For further information, contact Bonnie McClafferty (b.mcclafferty@cgiar.org) at IFPRI.