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Insulting the poor

SO THIS was in my Sunday paper’s business section: “… those on welfare have an incentive to breed. In the UK, the highest proportion of families with three or more kids live in the poorest neighbourhoods and their principal, and often sole, support is welfare benefits.

“It is elementary: more kids, more welfare – therefore, more kids. There are 300,000 families on welfare in the UK with three or more children. Of these, 100,000 have more than four children and 180 have more than 10 kids.

“The lesson is if incentives are provided, people will do whatever to access them.” (Sunday Times February 9 2014)
Hoo boy!

Comments from a well-known columnist. Worth a bit of rebuttal, I think, especially as this idea of the feckless poor popping out babies to get grants seems to have endless traction.

So here goes. Dear columnist, I realise that the quoted comments are about Britain, but of course, you make it quite clear that you’re applying the lessons to South Africa. So first off, are you aware that South Africa has a fertility rate of 2.35 (it’s dropping – the last time I checked, it was 2.45)?

Fertility rate means the total number of children born to each woman during her fertile years. So we’re averaging two-and-a-third children per woman, only slightly more than the USA – and decidedly less than the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger and Afghanistan, which are around six to seven kids per woman.

Lowest fertility rate in the world is in Macua, where women give birth to about one child in a lifetime.

Oh, but the better-off in South Africa have fewer children, so it all averages out, you might say. Us thoughtful middle classers plan our lives, you see, while the feckless poor just go ahead and ‘breed’. (Yes, that word really gets my goat, it is so insulting!)

Really? The middle class has apparently grown to something like 11.7% of the population, according to race, gender and growth of the affluent middle class in post-apartheid South Africa (Justin Visagie, September 2013). So about 6 million people, of whom perhaps 1.3 million are women of childbearing age.

In order to make a significant difference to the overall birth rate, we’d have to have made a class suicide pact. (Oh, and one definition of middle class is having an income in excess of R3 333 per month per household, so much of this slice of the population is still, in my book, pretty poor!)

I can’t help thinking of a family I know well – five daughters aged between 17 and 32, all born of the same mother back in the day when women did have five kids; today her daughters have three children among them, one on the way, and no plans for more in the pipeline.

Secondly, are you not aware (and if not, a quick Google would have been helpful – what is Google, you ask? Oh dear…) that the idea that people – young women, single mothers in particular – have children to get access to childcare grants has been pretty comprehensively rubbished by research over 30 years in countries ranging from Britain to the USA to South Africa.

Just two quotes bracketing decades of research: “…the best evidence shows that AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) benefits have no impact on childbearing decisions among young unmarried women. (Welfare and teen pregnancy: what do we know? what do we do? Children’s Defense Fund, USA 1986)

In South Africa, one has to ask why stories like these don’t sink in: “The child support grant (CSG) helps ease the burden on women, who bear the brunt of coping with poverty, and does not encourage teenage pregnancy, according to research conducted by the University of Johannesburg.”

“In this paper we outline the results of an analysis of teenage fertility trends and age patterns of Child Support Grant beneficiaries to examine whether the CSG is exerting a perverse effect by increasing teen pregnancy. From the analysis we conclude that there is no relationship between teenage fertility and the CSG. (Is the Child Support Grant associated with an increase in teenage fertility in South Africa? Monde Makiwane et al,Human Sciences Research Council, December 2006)

And this one from AfricaCheck just last year on the myth about teens falling pregnant for the miniscule grant (way under R4 000 a year). The story quoted a Limpopo health department report on research in this area which said: “It is evident from this study that the child support grant as a driver of teenage pregnancy is merely a perception.”

And that’s just one of many such published papers.

Oh, and on welfare as a whole, the new economics foundation (nef) last year published an article which included well-referenced stats and this comment: “… the vast majority of people claiming Job Seeker’s Allowance do not claim over the long-term. Less than half claim for more than 13 weeks and only 10 per cent of all claimants claim for more than a year.”

So yes, Mr Columnist, “The lesson is if incentives are provided, people will do whatever to access them.”

They intelligently use whatever is available to negotiate hard times, and do their best to get out of difficulties as quickly a possible. The problem in South Africa and indeed around the world is that there ARE NO JOBS, okay? That’s really not the fault of the poor, so let’s not insult them, hmm?

One final question: where is the biggest waste of public funds – providing below-breadline resources for the desperate, or the misspending of billions reported year after year?

- Fin24

*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.


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