The SAECR 2024 tracks trends on the status of children under 6. 
Income poverty & grantsDefinition
This indicator shows the number and share of children living in households that are income-poor.Four different poverty lines are used:
- An upper-bound poverty line that allows just enough money for basic nutrition and other essentials such as clothing (2024 value = R1634);
- A lower-bound poverty line that allows enough for essentials such as clothing but only if some nutritional costs are sacrificed (2024 value = R1109);
- A food poverty line that only allows enough for basic nutrition, and no other essentials (2024 value = R796);
- An ultra-low international poverty line, linked to the SDGs (US$1.90 or 2024 PPP value = R414).
Data
Source
Statistics South Africa (2004 - 2025) General Household Survey 2003 - 2024. Pretoria, Cape Town: Statistics South Africa.
Analysis by Katharine Hall & Sumaiyah Hendricks, Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town.
Analysis by Katharine Hall & Sumaiyah Hendricks, Children’s Institute, University of Cape Town.
Notes
- Children are defined as persons aged 0 – 17 years.
- Population numbers have been rounded off to the nearest thousand.
- Income is calculated as total reported earnings for household members over 15 years, plus value of social grants received by household, and divided by household size.
- Sample surveys are always subject to error, and the proportions simply reflect the mid-point of a possible range. The confidence intervals (CIs) indicate the reliability of the estimate at the 95% level. This means that, if independent samples were repeatedly taken from the same population, we would expect the proportion to lie between upper and lower bounds of the CI 95% of the time. The wider the CI, the more uncertain the proportion. Where CIs overlap for different sub-populations or time periods we cannot be sure that there is a real difference in the proportion, even if the mid points differ. CIs are represented in the bar graphs by vertical lines at the top of each bar.
What do the numbers tell us?
International law and the Constitution recognise the link between income and the realisation of basic human rights, and acknowledge that children have the right to social assistance (social grants) when families cannot meet children’s basic needs. Income poverty measures are therefore important for determining how many people need social assistance, and for evaluating the state’s progress in realising the right to social assistance.
No poverty line is perfect. Using a single income measure tells us nothing about how resources are distributed between family members, or how money is spent. But this measure does give some indication of how many children are living in households with severely constrained resources.
The poverty threshold used is the Statistics South Africa’s (Stats SA) ‘upper bound’ poverty line that was set at R779 per person per month in 2011 prices. The poverty lines increase with inflation and in 2024 the real value of the upper bound line was R1,634.[1] Per capita income is calculated by adding all reported earnings for household members older than 15 years, adding the value of social grants received by anyone in the household, and dividing the total household income by the number of household members.
Stats SA publishes two other poverty lines:
- The ‘lower bound’ poverty line is calculated by adding to the food poverty line the average expenditure on essential non-food items by households whose food expenditure is below but close to the food poverty line. The value of the lower bound poverty line in 2011 prices was R501 per person per month (R1,109 in 2024 prices). Those living below this line would not be able to pay for the minimum non-food expenses or would be sacrificing their basic nutrition to pay for non-food expenses.
- The ‘food’ poverty line is based on the cost of the minimum nutritional requirement of 2,100 kilocalories per person per day, without any allowance for other basic necessities. The value of the food poverty line in 2011 prices was R335 per person per month (R796 in 2024). Anyone living below this line will be malnourished and their health and survival may be at risk.
Child poverty rates reduced substantially following the introduction of the Child Support Grant (CSG) was introduced, but a large number of children remain in poverty. In 2019, 56% of children (11.2 million) lived below the upper bound poverty line and 33% were below the food poverty line. Income poverty rates had fallen substantially since 2003, when 78% of children (14.1 million) were defined as ‘poor’ at the upper bound threshold and 53% were below the food poverty line. The reduction in the child poverty headcount over this period was mainly the result of a massive expansion in the reach of the CSG.
Child poverty rates increased in the COVID-19 lockdown year of 2020, with the upper bound poverty rate rising by seven percentage points to 63%, and the child food poverty rate rising by six percentage points to 39%. Average poverty rates levelled off in 2021, although they did not decline. Poverty rates then increased again in most provinces in 2022 and remained at that higher level in 2023 and 2024. Across all the poverty measures, poverty rates were higher in 2024 than they were in the pre-lockdown year of 2019. In terms of population numbers, this translates as an additional 1.2 million children below the food poverty line, and an additional 3.1 million children below the upper-bound poverty line, compared with 2019. Given that the child population has grown over the past two decades, the poverty headcount in 2024 was similar to that in 2003, despite an overall reduction in the poverty rate over the two decades.
There are substantial differences in poverty rates across the provinces. Using the upper bound poverty line, over 75% of children in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and North West are poor. Gauteng and the Western Cape have the lowest child poverty rates, although there was a substantial increase in poverty in both these provinces – from 35% in 2019 to 54% in 2024 in Gauteng, and from 27% to 41% in the Western Cape. Child poverty remains most prominent in the rural areas of the former homelands, where 86% of children were below the poverty line in 2024. However, poverty rates have also risen sharply among urban children, with the upper bound poverty rate in urban areas standing at 56% in 2024 (up from 41% in 2019), and the urban food poverty rate at 25% (up from 21%).
There are glaring racial disparities in income poverty: 74% of African children lived in households below the upper bound poverty line in 2024 (up from 61% in 2019). Although poverty rates among Coloured children are consistently lower than for African children, the increase in poverty was even more pronounced in the Coloured population over the period, with upper bound poverty rates rising from 33% in 2019 to 48% in 2024. The lockdown period had no significant impact on poverty rates among Indian and White children.
There are no significant differences in child poverty levels across gender or between different age groups in the child population.
Using Stats SA’s lower bound poverty line (which only provides for basic essentials if people make food sacrifices), 51% of children (10,8 million) were poor in 2024 (up from 44% in 2019), and 37% (7.8 million children) were below the food poverty line, meaning that they were not getting enough nutrition.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015 and set a global agenda for development by 2030. Target 1.1 is to eradicate extreme poverty using the international poverty line, which was originally set at $1 per day by the MDGs, then increased to $1.25. It was revised upwards for the SDGs, to $1.90 and again to $2.15. In July 2025, the World Bank announced a further increase in the international ultra-poverty line, raising it to $3 per day.[2] This would translate to R654 per person per month in 2024, using the International Monetary Fund purchasing power parity conversion.[3] This poverty line is extremely low – below survival level – and is not appropriate for South Africa. No child should be below it. In 2024, a quarter of all children in South Africa (24%) lived below the international poverty line.
[1] Statistics South Africa. National Poverty Lines. Statistical Release No. P0310.1. Pretoria: Stats SA. 2018.
[2] Hasell J, Rohenkohl B, Arriagada P. $3 a Day: A new poverty line has shifted the World Bank’s data on extreme poverty. What changed, and why? OurWorldinData: 2025. Accessed: 11 September 2025. Available from: https://ourworldindata.org/new-international-poverty-line-3-dollars-per-day.
[3] International Monetary Fund. World Economic Outlook Database: International Monetary Fund; 2022. Accessed: 10 September 2025. Available from: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2022/April/download-entire-database.
Technical notes
The General Household Survey asks a set of questions to establish whether household members over 15 years are economically active. For those who are economically active and report their earnings, these amounts are standardised to monthly values.
For those who report earnings in income bands rather than discrete amounts, each income bracket is split into deciles for those who indicated an income in that bracket, and a uniform distribution of income is assigned within each income bracket decile, for those who indicated an income in that bracket.
For those who are economically active but did not provide a discrete income amount or indicate an income bracket (unspecified/refused), the median income for men and women in each population group is allocated. The medians are calculated separately for each year.
Total household income from earnings is calculated as the total earnings for all household members over 15 years. Total household income from social grants is calculated by allocating the grant amounts for that year for each type of grant reported to be received by household members. Total household income is derived by adding total income from earnings and grants. Per capita income is calculated by adding all reported income for household members older than 15 years, including social grants, and dividing the total household income by the number of household members.
The three South African poverty lines were set in 2011 Rand values. This are inflated using headline CPIX reported by Statistics South Africa for each year. Per capita income is calculated by dividing total household income equally by the number of household members.
In addition to the three poverty lines (upper, lower and food poverty) is the $1.25-a-day international poverty line. This poverty line is used by the World Bank and other international groups for monitoring poverty rates in developing countries and is used as an ultra poverty line for reporting against the SDGs.
There are many limitations to working with poverty lines, not least that any cut-off point is arbitrary, there may be many children clustered just below the poverty threshold, and the headcount ratios do not tell us about the depth of poverty or whether people are moving in and out of poverty. Unlike the Income & Expenditure survey, the General Household Survey is not designed to obtain detailed income and expenditure data. For example, it does not record information on income from dividents and investments, or detailed information about income from remittances and other non-labour sources. This may result in an over-estimation of the poverty rate. For many years, social grants have been under-reported in the General Household Survey, but reporting has become more accurate over time and in 2019 the number of children for whom child support grants were reported was slightly higher than the official numbers reported by SASSA.
For those who report earnings in income bands rather than discrete amounts, each income bracket is split into deciles for those who indicated an income in that bracket, and a uniform distribution of income is assigned within each income bracket decile, for those who indicated an income in that bracket.
For those who are economically active but did not provide a discrete income amount or indicate an income bracket (unspecified/refused), the median income for men and women in each population group is allocated. The medians are calculated separately for each year.
Total household income from earnings is calculated as the total earnings for all household members over 15 years. Total household income from social grants is calculated by allocating the grant amounts for that year for each type of grant reported to be received by household members. Total household income is derived by adding total income from earnings and grants. Per capita income is calculated by adding all reported income for household members older than 15 years, including social grants, and dividing the total household income by the number of household members.
The three South African poverty lines were set in 2011 Rand values. This are inflated using headline CPIX reported by Statistics South Africa for each year. Per capita income is calculated by dividing total household income equally by the number of household members.
In addition to the three poverty lines (upper, lower and food poverty) is the $1.25-a-day international poverty line. This poverty line is used by the World Bank and other international groups for monitoring poverty rates in developing countries and is used as an ultra poverty line for reporting against the SDGs.
There are many limitations to working with poverty lines, not least that any cut-off point is arbitrary, there may be many children clustered just below the poverty threshold, and the headcount ratios do not tell us about the depth of poverty or whether people are moving in and out of poverty. Unlike the Income & Expenditure survey, the General Household Survey is not designed to obtain detailed income and expenditure data. For example, it does not record information on income from dividents and investments, or detailed information about income from remittances and other non-labour sources. This may result in an over-estimation of the poverty rate. For many years, social grants have been under-reported in the General Household Survey, but reporting has become more accurate over time and in 2019 the number of children for whom child support grants were reported was slightly higher than the official numbers reported by SASSA.
Strengths and limitations of the data
The numbers are derived from the General Household Survey, a multi-purpose annual survey conducted by the national statistical agency, Statistics South Africa, to collect information on a range of topics from households in the country’s nine provinces.
The GHS uses a Master Sample frame which has been developed as a general-purpose household survey frame that can be used by all other Stats SA household-based surveys that have design requirements that are reasonably compatible with the GHS. The sample is drawn from Census enumeration areas using a stratified two-stage design with probability proportional to size sampling of PSUs in teh first stage, and sampling of dwelling units with systematic sampling in the second stage. The resulting sample consists of just over 20,000 households with around 70,000 individuals, and should be representative of all households in South Africa. It is also designed to be representative at provincial level and within provinces at metro/non-metro levels and three geography types (urban areas, rural areas under traditional authority, and farms).
The sample consists of households and does not cover other collective institutionalised living-quarters such as boarding schools, orphanages, students’ hostels, old-age homes, hospitals, prisons, military barracks and workers’ hostels. These exclusions probably do not have a noticeable impact on the findings in respect of children.
Changes in sample frame and stratification
Since 2014 the GHS has been based on the 2013 master sample that that is, in turn, based on information collected during the 2011 Population Census. The previous master sample for the GHS was used for the first time in 2008, and the one before that in 2004. These again differed from the master sample used in the first two years of the GHS: 2002 and 2003. Thus there have been four different sampling frames during history of the annual GHS, with the changes occurring in 2004, 2008 and 2013. In addition, there have been changes in the method of stratification over the years. These changes could compromise comparability across iterations of the survey to some extent, although it is common practice to use the GHS for longitudinal monitoring and many of the official trend analyses are drawn from this survey.
Weights
Person and household weights are provided by Stats SA and are applied in Children Count analyses to give population estimates on the indicators. The GHS weights are derived from Stats SA’s mid-year population estimates for the relevant year. The population estimates are based on a model that is revised from time to time when it is possible to calibrate the population model to Census data and larger population surveys such as the Community Survey.
In 2017, Stats SA revised its demographic model to produce a new series of mid-year population estimates and the GHS data were re-released with the revised population weights. All the Children Count indicators were re-analysed retrospectively, using the revised weights provided by Stats SA, based on the 2013 model. The estimates are therefore comparable over all years. The revised weights particularly affected estimates for the years 2002 – 2007.
The 2017 model drew on the 2011 census, along with vital registration, antenatal and other administrative data, but was a “smoothed” model that did not mimic the unusual shape of the age distribution found in the census. The results of the 2011 census were initially distrusted because it seemed to over-count children in the 0 – 4 age group and under-count children in the 4 – 14-year group. It is now thought that the fertility rates recorded in the 2011 population census may have been an accurate reflection of demopraphic trends, with an unexplained upswing in fertility around 2009 after which fertility rates declined again gradually. Similar patterns were found in the vital registration data as more births were reported retrospectively to the Department of Home Affairs, and in administrative data from schools, compiled by the Department of Basic Education. In effect, this means that there may be more children in South Africa than appear from the analyses presented in these analyses, where we have applied weights based on a model that it is now known to be inaccurate.
Stats SA has subsequently developed a new population model - the 2022 series, which provides revised mid-year population estimates back to 2002 and projected to 2032. However, the GHS series has not yet been reweighted.The population estimates in Children Count are therefore based on weights derived from outdated population model (2017). It is not yet clear when and how the population model will be revised again following the 2022 Census, as there are concerns around census under-count and plausibility of its findings.
Disaggregation
Statistics South Africa suggests caution when attempting to interpret data generated at low level disaggregation. The population estimates are benchmarked at the national level in terms of age, sex and population group while at provincial level, benchmarking is by population group only. This could mean that estimates derived from any further disaggregation of the provincial data below the population group may not be robust enough.
Reporting error
Error may be present due to the methodology used, i.e. the questionnaire is administered to only one respondent in the household who is expected to provide information about all other members of the household. Not all respondents will have accurate information about all children in the household. In instances where the respondent did not or could not provide an answer, this was recorded as “unspecified” (no response) or “don’t know” (the respondent stated that they didn’t know the answer).
For more information on the methods of the General Household Survey, see the metadata for the respective survey years, available on Nesstar or DataFirst
The GHS uses a Master Sample frame which has been developed as a general-purpose household survey frame that can be used by all other Stats SA household-based surveys that have design requirements that are reasonably compatible with the GHS. The sample is drawn from Census enumeration areas using a stratified two-stage design with probability proportional to size sampling of PSUs in teh first stage, and sampling of dwelling units with systematic sampling in the second stage. The resulting sample consists of just over 20,000 households with around 70,000 individuals, and should be representative of all households in South Africa. It is also designed to be representative at provincial level and within provinces at metro/non-metro levels and three geography types (urban areas, rural areas under traditional authority, and farms).
The sample consists of households and does not cover other collective institutionalised living-quarters such as boarding schools, orphanages, students’ hostels, old-age homes, hospitals, prisons, military barracks and workers’ hostels. These exclusions probably do not have a noticeable impact on the findings in respect of children.
Changes in sample frame and stratification
Since 2014 the GHS has been based on the 2013 master sample that that is, in turn, based on information collected during the 2011 Population Census. The previous master sample for the GHS was used for the first time in 2008, and the one before that in 2004. These again differed from the master sample used in the first two years of the GHS: 2002 and 2003. Thus there have been four different sampling frames during history of the annual GHS, with the changes occurring in 2004, 2008 and 2013. In addition, there have been changes in the method of stratification over the years. These changes could compromise comparability across iterations of the survey to some extent, although it is common practice to use the GHS for longitudinal monitoring and many of the official trend analyses are drawn from this survey.
Weights
Person and household weights are provided by Stats SA and are applied in Children Count analyses to give population estimates on the indicators. The GHS weights are derived from Stats SA’s mid-year population estimates for the relevant year. The population estimates are based on a model that is revised from time to time when it is possible to calibrate the population model to Census data and larger population surveys such as the Community Survey.
In 2017, Stats SA revised its demographic model to produce a new series of mid-year population estimates and the GHS data were re-released with the revised population weights. All the Children Count indicators were re-analysed retrospectively, using the revised weights provided by Stats SA, based on the 2013 model. The estimates are therefore comparable over all years. The revised weights particularly affected estimates for the years 2002 – 2007.
The 2017 model drew on the 2011 census, along with vital registration, antenatal and other administrative data, but was a “smoothed” model that did not mimic the unusual shape of the age distribution found in the census. The results of the 2011 census were initially distrusted because it seemed to over-count children in the 0 – 4 age group and under-count children in the 4 – 14-year group. It is now thought that the fertility rates recorded in the 2011 population census may have been an accurate reflection of demopraphic trends, with an unexplained upswing in fertility around 2009 after which fertility rates declined again gradually. Similar patterns were found in the vital registration data as more births were reported retrospectively to the Department of Home Affairs, and in administrative data from schools, compiled by the Department of Basic Education. In effect, this means that there may be more children in South Africa than appear from the analyses presented in these analyses, where we have applied weights based on a model that it is now known to be inaccurate.
Stats SA has subsequently developed a new population model - the 2022 series, which provides revised mid-year population estimates back to 2002 and projected to 2032. However, the GHS series has not yet been reweighted.The population estimates in Children Count are therefore based on weights derived from outdated population model (2017). It is not yet clear when and how the population model will be revised again following the 2022 Census, as there are concerns around census under-count and plausibility of its findings.
Disaggregation
Statistics South Africa suggests caution when attempting to interpret data generated at low level disaggregation. The population estimates are benchmarked at the national level in terms of age, sex and population group while at provincial level, benchmarking is by population group only. This could mean that estimates derived from any further disaggregation of the provincial data below the population group may not be robust enough.
Reporting error
Error may be present due to the methodology used, i.e. the questionnaire is administered to only one respondent in the household who is expected to provide information about all other members of the household. Not all respondents will have accurate information about all children in the household. In instances where the respondent did not or could not provide an answer, this was recorded as “unspecified” (no response) or “don’t know” (the respondent stated that they didn’t know the answer).
For more information on the methods of the General Household Survey, see the metadata for the respective survey years, available on Nesstar or DataFirst
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