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South African food safety experts warned early on that the lockdown instituted to control the spread of COVID-19 would threaten children’s nutrition. Before the onset of the pandemic, one third of South Africa’s 20 million children already lived in households that were below the food poverty line.
The blockade pushed many more into food insecurity and hunger. The food crisis was not due to a national food shortage or distribution failure: stores remained open and food was on the shelves.
Instead, it was a crisis of poverty, exacerbated by the loss of household income from work. It took a few months before the impact on households and children could be quantified.
The first round of a National Income Dynamics Survey (NIDS-CRAM) showed massive job losses: about 3 million fewer people were employed in April than in February. Two million of those who lost their jobs were women.
Almost half of those surveyed said their households ran out of money to buy food in April and 15% of those living in households with children reported child hunger. This was the case even though the majority of these households received at least one child support grant.
The food security of more than 9 million children was further undermined when schools closed and the school feeding program ceased to function. This put more pressure on the resources of caregivers who needed to replace missed meals.
In a pernicious twist, food prices also rose substantially.
Insufficiency of the social protection program
South Africa’s extensive social grant program transfers nearly 18 million grants to low-income and vulnerable people each month. Analysis of the status quo prior to closure showed that the child support subsidy was well targeted at households that were most vulnerable to the effects of closure, including 80% of those in informal worker households.
The child support grant is the most pro-poor of all the grants due to its low resource test. It also has the broadest reach, with more than 7 million caregivers paid to help support nearly 13 million children. But it failed to protect children and their homes from shocks.
COVID-19 amplified the inequalities and vulnerabilities that already existed and drew attention to the huge holes in the safety net. These included the fact that the child support subsidy (R440 per month in 2020, approximately US $ 70 in purchasing power parity) was not enough to meet a child’s nutritional needs.
The crisis also brought to the fore the total absence of social benefits for adults of working age (unless they had a disability), regardless of the structural conditions that affected their lives.
There was some temporary relief in the form of a disaster relief package. It included a R300 top-up to child support for just one month and R250 top-ups to the other existing grants for six months. It also included a new R500 Caregiver Grant for five months and a COVID-19 Social Distress Relief Grant of R350 per month for working-age adults who were unemployed and not receiving any other grants.
The disaster relief grant package was scheduled to last through October 2020. The October Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement included provisions for the extension of the emergency welfare grant and the President announced a new extension in February.
But there were loopholes. The grant supplements were not extended after October and neither was the caregiver grant. Caregivers who received child support allowance for their children were excluded from applying for social distress relief allowance for themselves.
UN human rights bodies have advised that families with children should be given priority in material aid programs. However, there is no disaster relief for caregivers. There is no subsidy for them in the child support subsidy and the COVID-19 subsidy cannot be used if the caregiver is unemployed.
This is an impossible and punitive paradox for caregivers of working age, the vast majority of whom are women.
Women were overrepresented among those who lost their jobs or were laid off in 2020. They were also underrepresented in the support mechanisms established for employees who lost their jobs because they were less likely than men to be employed in the formal sector to begin with.
However, men received the social relief grant disproportionately because women who received child grants were unable to apply.
The same rule does not apply to senior caregivers who receive the senior grant. Almost one million pensioners also receive a child support grant. The system recognizes that both the elderly caregiver and the child need financial assistance; they cannot be expected to share a single grant.
Child hunger and malnutrition
The authors of the South African Child Gauge 2020 describe the invisible, cumulative and devastating effects of chronic malnutrition as a form of “slow violence”. Poor nutrition stunts children’s growth and reduces their chances of life.
A quarter of children under the age of five are too short for their age due to chronic malnutrition. This number has not changed substantially in the last two decades. Despite its wide scope, the small child support grant has not been able to reduce the persistently high rates of stunting.
The survey on national income dynamics followed measures of hunger for adults and children during 2020. The pattern is clear: there was a dramatic increase in hunger in the first months of the confinement, which eased somewhat in July and August. But after the cessation of refills and the caregiver grant, these improvements were reversed. Child hunger increased despite more relaxed lockdown regulations and some improvements in employment figures.
What is needed
Because the grant adjustments over the past year occurred in the context of an urgent response to a disaster, there has been little time for a systematic process to explore policy options. There is no indication that the proposed adjustments were subjected to any kind of child or gender impact analysis before decisions were made.
It is time to move from piecemeal, temporary and insufficient disaster relief to adequate social protection for all.
One of the strengths of the child support grant is that it is legislated as a permanent grant during normal times, not just during a disaster, and therefore cannot be withdrawn. The COVID-19 Emergency Outreach Grant is a temporary disaster relief grant. It can be reduced or discontinued at any time, just like the Caregiver Grant.
There are three recommendations that follow from this:
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The government should invest in increasing the child support subsidy.
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The COVID-19 social distress relief grant should be changed to a permanent (legislated) income support grant for adults.
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The income support allowance must be available to unemployed carers, including those who receive the child support allowance.
From a child health and development perspective, an increase in the value of the child support grant is key, if not at the level of the other grants, then at least at the level of food poverty as a minimum benchmark. This should be complemented by programs to support the nutrition and mental health of pregnant women and improvements in service delivery to ensure early acceptance of the child support subsidy.
Addressing the persistent burden of malnutrition is an urgent imperative. It will be costly in the short term, but not doing so will be too costly for the children, their families, and the country in the long run.
The budget announcement will contain important clues about the direction of government investments. Children and the women who care for them can no longer be asked to tighten their belts.
Katharine Hall has already received funding from the NRF.
By Katharine Hall, Principal Investigator, Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town
