Family Support and Rapid Social Change in South Africa

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project brings together researchers from the United States and South Africa to analyze patterns of family support and intergenerational transfers in South Africa. South Africa provides a unique setting for analyzing the interaction between public programs and private transfers in an environment of rapid social change. Post-apartheid South Africa is a society undergoing a combination of rapidly expanding opportunities for the non-white population, combined with enormous challenges. With a severe unemployment problem and the rapid growth of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, rapid social change has not relieved the stresses of day-to-day survival faced by many South African families. Given the combination of high unemployment, the impact of HIV/AIDS on the working age population, and a welfare policy that is dominated by an extensive state old-age pension policy, family support structures in South Africa are unusually complex. For many poor households, major resources flow into families from the elderly, while working age adults and children are often net consumers of resources. In examining these dynamics, the project will use a number of existing data sets, including national income and expenditure surveys, a national labor force panel, and a number of smaller regional surveys. It will supplement these data sets with specifically designed modules in the second wave of the Cape Area Panel Study, along with qualitative and quantitative work before and after the second wave. Specific aims include the following: 1. Estimation of expenditure regressions to test whether income from pensions or child grants has a different impact than other sources of income, and whether there is a differential effect of income transfers received by men versus women. 2. Estimation of the impact of pensions, child grants, and other sources of income, on outcomes such as schooling and employment of young people, using both direct data on transfer income and using the strong age discontinuities in pension eligibility. 3. Use of panel data from the South African Labour Force Survey to analyze transitions in employment, schooling, and household composition, and the impact of job loss on outcomes such as the schooling and labor supply of other household members. 4. Use of the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS) to analyze the effects of family disruption and recent negative household events on youth outcomes. 5. Development, administration, and analysis of a supplemental module on family support and intergenerational transfers for CAPS Wave 2.