The impact of the South African child support and old age grants on children’s schooling and work

D Budlender and I Woolard, 2006

In South Africa the child support grant and the old age pension benefit millions of households with school-going children. These grants are unconditional. Despite this, the paper suggests, the child support grant “is potentially a powerful means of improving schooling and child labour outcomes in the country”. The study attempts to ascertain whether this potential is being reached, using existing data sources from 2004. It concludes that the child support grant has a “statistically significant, although small, impact on (school) enrolment”. The paper proposes that the analysis be repeated at a later stage, when the child support grant applies to a wider age range, and suggests minor changes to data collection in existing surveys so that the impact in terms of schooling and child labour can be more accurately measured.

Full text

The impact of the South African child support and old age grants on children’s schooling and work