“We find that just under a third (31%) of informal workers who did not lose their livelihoods completely, were ‘locked out’ of employment in April – compared with 26% of those in formal employment.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a direct negative impact on access to non-COVID-19 related healthcare. In May, the Gauteng Provincial Health Department noted that close to 11,000 HIV patients have failed to collect their medicines since the start of the lockdown period.”
“We find that women have been more severely affected than men in the early phase of the crisis in South Africa, namely the ‘hard’ lockdown period. Net job losses between February and April 2020 were higher for women than for men, with women accounting for two-thirds of the total net job losses.”
“Since democratization, social assistance in particular has expanded significantly with nearly 18 million recipients (or nearly one in every three South Africans) as of 2019/20 at a cost of 3.4% of GDP (South African Social Assistance Agency, 2020). However, little progress has been made with respect to social insurance (Woolard et al., 2011).”
“Within our sample of over 6000 adults aged 18 to 59, we found that there was a very large decrease in employment. The fraction of the sample that was conventionally classified as employed decreased from 57% in February to 48% in April. If we further exclude temporarily absent workers, this fraction decreases further to 38%.”
“The true value of the NIDS-CRAM data lies in the fact that it is a panel survey and follows the same individuals over this turbulent time. Recognising who is entering and leaving employment and what this means for their household’s livelihood is a critical issue that can only be answered with panel data.”
“In newly collected data from Wave 1 of the NIDS-CRAM study, 15% of respondents reported that a child in their household had gone hungry in the week before they were interviewed in May or June. For the month of April, 47% of respondents reported that their household had run of money (the first month of the lockdown, before social relief measures were instituted).”
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