CPRC Partners

CPRC’s work in South Africa has been led by the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies  (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape. The aim is to improve understanding of the links between chronic and structural poverty.

Research

Research on chronic poverty in South Africa has focused on livelihood strategies of poor and vulnerable people and how these are embedded in the broader political economy; economic growth and the informal economy, where a majority of chronically poor people earn their living; and social protection (state social grants) in the context of South Africa. 

Two major events, Working on the Margins: Addressing structural poverty and economic marginalisation in South Africa in 2009 and Living on the Margins: Vulnerability, social exclusion and the state in the informal economy in 2007, have brought together important research on the informal economcy and structural poverty.

CPRC partners were closely involved with the National Income Dynamics Survey which enabled CPRC to feed research results into the highest level of national policy. Research by PLAAS has also contributed to the development of the Integrated Food Security and Nutrition programme in the Western Cape. 

Other significant research include an Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping System (FIVIMS) for the Department of Agriculture, and a study on Vulnerability, Labour Markets and Social Protection (VLMSP) for the South African Treasury.

Key resources

Chronic and structural poverty in South Africa

• Decentring poverty, reworking government: movements and states in the government of poverty
  ^{CPRC Working paper 149}
• A fresh start for rural development and agrarian reform

Vulnerability and social protection

• Looking forward: theory-based measures of chronic poverty and vulnerability
  ^{CPRC Working paper 94}
• Social protection, citizenship and the employment relationship
  ^{Workshop presentation}
• More to life than economics and livelihoods: rethinking social protection and social development in post-apartheid South Africa
  ^{PLAAS Working paper}
  

Economic growth and the informal economy

• In Search of South Africa's Second Economy: Chronic poverty, economic marginalisation and adverse incorporation in Mt Frere and Khayelitsha
  ^{CPRC Working paper 102}
• Formal-informal economy linkages. What implications for poverty in South Africa?
  ^{PLAAS Working paper}
• SMMEs, the informal sector and the ‘second economy’
  ^{PLAAS Working paper}
• Sour grapes: a study of the impact of different forms of contingent labour on poverty in the farming community of the Hex River Valley
  ^{PLAAS Working paper}

View more publications on South Africa