Study of the Incidence and Nature of Chronic Poverty and Development Policy in South Africa: An Overview

This study aims to understand chronic poverty in South Africa through literature review on poverty. The study also provides an overview of anti-poverty measures of government and civil society and speculates on its impact on the chronically poor.

The study, thereby:

• Summarizes the current state of knowledge about chronic poverty in South Africa;
• Describes the range of existing governmental and civil society initiatives which address chronic poverty;
• Identifies challenges to addressing chronic poverty in South Africa;
• Identifies themes for further research.

Further, the study lists the challenges faced by government and civil society to address chronic poverty:

• The absence of a coherent anti-poverty strategy;
• Prevalent unemployment and uncertainty on improving support to the microenterprise sector;
• The HIV/AIDS epidemic as a factor causing chronic poverty over the next 15 years.

Finally, the paper identifies nine themes for further research on chronic poverty:

• Dynamic aspects of multiple livelihood strategies;
• Role of social security grants;
• Access to and effects of government and civil society programs;
• The impact of government-funded income generation projects;
• Role of land, tenure patterns, and agriculture;
• Consequences of dislocation, internal migration, and social capital;
• The effect of HIV/AIDS on households and communities;
• Extrapolation to the question of inter-generational poverty;
• The political economy of poverty and development policy in South Africa.