TECL II
An overview of the child support grant
Updated Feb 2008.
The Child Support Grant (CSG) was introduced in 1998 and is a
relatively modest grant paid to primary care givers (PCGs) of children
up to a set age, where they are in households with an income below a
set level. In 2008 the grant was increased (with effect Octobert 2008)
to R220 per month (about US$31) per child. It is in essence an
un-conditional cash transfer or grant.
Key factors in eligibility for the grant:
- The grant is available for children under the age of 14 years (since April 2005). Initially it was available only for children under 7 years. The age cut-off will increase to 15 years with effect Jan 2009; ie it would be available for children until they turn 15 years old.
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Since the introduction of the grant was available only the children in households where the household income was below R800 per month for children and PCGs living in formal housing in urban areas and R1,100 per month for children and PCGs living in rural areas or in informal housing in urban areas. This income distinction was made on the basis that children in rural areas and in informal housing tend to be disadvantaged in relation to access to services and in other respects. In 2008 it was announced that this means test will be reviewed.
- The “primary caregiver” (PCG) is defined as the person who takes
primary responsibility for meeting the daily care needs of the child,
but excludes caregivers who are paid to do this, or who give care
without the consent of the child’s legal caregiver. Because the
caregiver has to have an identity document, s/he cannot be under 16
years of age as the children below this age do not have this document
in South Africa.
Background
Before the first democratic government was elected in 1994, grants were biased against those who needed it most, mainly on race grounds. However, the new government felt that it could not afford merely to extend existing grants to Africans as this would have increased the budget substantially, eg for the maintenance grant from around R1.2bn per year to somewhere between R5bn and R10bn per year. Additional reasons for government’s reluctance to extend the grant were its attempts to move towards a “developmental social welfare” approach, and thus less reliance on grants, as well as a tighter overall macro-economic policy which had a reduction in the budget deficit as one of its primary aims.
The government appointed the Lund Committee, which drew on both international experience and local knowledge and research, and proposed a new “child support grant” payable to primary care givers of young children. This grant would initially reach a small age group – only children up to the age of seven – and be set at a low monthly amount.
The “primary care giver” concept was introduced in recognition that the majority of South African children – and poor children in particular – do not live in a nuclear household. Many live apart from a biological parent, sometimes with a grandparent, but sometimes with someone else. The grant was thus designed to “follow the child” and be given to the caregiver most appropriate for a particular child.
In introducing the grant, government acknowledged that the small amount involved could in no way meet all the needs of a child. However, government argued that the grant had to be seen alongside a range of other programmes and policies that provided for the child. In particular, the Lund Committee held workshops with those involved and made detailed recommendations in respect of improvement of the private maintenance system so as to provide another source of funding for children with parents with income. The focus on children aged 0-6 was justified on the grounds that these children, because they were not in school, were more difficult to reach through other means, such as school feeding. Further, under-nutrition in the first years of life can negatively affect the person for the rest of their life.
When the CSG was introduced, it included several conditionalities.
Applicants were initially expected to participate in “development
programmes” and to have proof that the children for whom they were
applying were immunised. The requirement in respect of development
programmes was dropped after it became obvious that such programmes
simply did not exist in many areas. The requirement in respect of
immunisation was dropped out of recognition that it often discriminated
against children who were already disadvantaged in terms of access to
services.
The broad reach of the CSG
Take-up of the grant was at first slow. This was partly a result of the various conditionalities and the nature of the means test. It was also the result of limited efforts in some parts of government to roll out the grant. Once the regulations were changed and real effort was put into rolling out the grant, numbers increased rapidly.
The cut-off as at the beginning of 2008 (14 years) contradicts government policy in respect of work in that children may only be legally employed after the last school day in the year that they turn fifteen or have completed compulsory schooling. Children of fourteen and many aged fifteen thus cannot receive the grant but also cannot legally enter into employment to raise the necessary money in this way.
In 2007/08 the total projected for the CSG is still smaller than the
R23.1bn projected for the Old Age Pension (OAP). However the CSG
reaches far more beneficiaries as the size of the grant is only just
over a fifth of the size of the OAP. In April 2005 Treasury reported
5,633,647 child beneficiaries of the CSG as against 2,093,075
beneficiaries of the OAP and 1,307,459 beneficiaries of the disability
grant. While take-up of the disability grant has also increased
significantly over recent years, partly as a result of the HIV/AIDS
pandemic, the increase in CSG beneficiary numbers has been steeper. By
February 2006, SOCPEN, the computerised management system for grant
distribution, recorded 6,980,088 child beneficiaries, 2,247,254 OAP
beneficiaries, and 1,306,092 disability grant beneficiaries.