An uncertain future: The plight of the poor is compounded by
CHILD SUPPORT
South Africa’s child support grant is exemplary among social assistance programmes for children in low- and middle-income countries.
The recent review of its size, targeting and effectiveness in the South African Child Gauge 2016 illustrates why. The evidence quoted in the Child Gauge is bolstered by that from programmes in other parts of the world — demonstrating the benefits of secure, long-term cash grants for children’s health, development, education and social wellbeing, as well as their families’ capacity to care for them.
Over the past decade and a half, more than 120 cash transfer programmes were implemented in Africa. Relatively few are guaranteed by legislation and paid from a country’s own fiscal resources, as social grants in South Africa are.
Most cash transfers in Latin-American countries are scaled up, benefiting some half a billion people. These programmes differ from ours in that they are paid on condition that recipients attend health services and schools.
In addition, their experimental approach and staged roll-out has allowed for rigorous evaluation of implementation conditions and effects and have contributed greatly to our knowledge about cash transfers — demonstrating that they are an efficient and effective policy instrument.
But the benefits go beyond children, beyond the first 18 years of life. What cash transfers do, as effective minimum wages have also been shown to do, is to increase the capacity of families to care for their children.
Even a modest increase in household monthly income, through a grant or a wage, has the potential to better the lives of millions of children around the world, because families generally spend this money on children — thus improving children’s nutrition, their healthy growth and their potential to gain from schooling. The investment is not only in this child, now, but in this person for the full period of their lifespan.
But the benefits even extend beyond that. The investment is not only in this child but also in the children they will have one day.
On any one day, a child support grant helps an individual child to escape the chill and hunger of poverty. But the combined effect of mechanisms to reduce poverty and inequality, such as the child support grant, across our society and into future generations, is an important contributor to human capacity and development.
To realise the full potential of the benefits of the child support grant we also have to ensure that improved capacity to access services is matched by quality of provision in healthcare, education, housing and all forms of social services.
This opinion piece draws on Professor Linda Richter’s address at the launch of the South African Child Gauge 2016. The Child Gauge is published annually by the Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town. The 2016 issue focuses on children and social assistance. Richter is the director of the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development at the University of the Witwatersrand