Social exclusion traps people in poverty, report

Although South Africa enjoys living standards that are, on average, significantly higher than its neighbours, racially imbedded inequality makes it extremely difficult for people to escape poverty.

This is because the poor, who are predominantly black, lack the connections to better-off people who could assist them with access to jobs, loans and other support, says a report 'Sense in Sociability? Social Exclusion and Persistent Poverty in South Africa'.

The study, produced jointly by the International Food Policy Research Institute and the universities of Wisconsin and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), argues that "large numbers of South Africans are indeed trapped without a pathway out of poverty".

As a result of the apartheid legacy, South Africa's poor find it difficult "to use social mechanisms of access to capital to engineer a pathway from poverty", the report commented.

It noted that "in sharp contrast to the expectation that the end of apartheid would signal the creation of an economy that worked for all South Africans ... time and the South African economy have proven to be rather feeble allies in the fight against poverty, generating neither sufficient growth, nor improvements in income distribution and poverty measures".

According to the UN 2003 Human Development Report Close to 22 million South Africans were still considered poor. The country's official unemployment rate hovers around 30 percent.

The paper postulates that the legacy of apartheid is an economy in which social exclusion and poverty continue to interact in a mutually self-sustaining fashion. Using data from studies in the province of KZN, the report explained the importance of social capital.

"The main way in which social capital influences wellbeing is by mediating access to work. Friends or relatives provide information about jobs in the city, contacts with employers, and advice on how to get the job. They sometimes also provide transportation fees and accommodation for job seekers. Better-off households tend to have more effective networks for these purposes, since those who have work also have better connections and information," the paper explained.

"To the extent that the main paths through which social relationships provide economic benefits are through information about work and remittances, the high unemployment rate in the province [KZN], and the country as a whole, means that these paths are more often that not closed off to those who are poor and marginalised," the report noted.

Poor people do not have the resources to provide much help to each other, and they are not connected with others who do, the study added.

Thus "social capital becomes more narrowly constructed and increasingly ineffective as a mechanism of capital access for poor people, in a country facing a legacy of horizontal inequality and social exclusion" based on race.

"The broader problem of poverty alleviation seems unlikely to be resolved until deeper structural changes make time and markets work more effectively for the broader community," the report concluded.

For the full report go to: www.basis.wisc.edu