50% Of Households In South Africa Receive Sassa Grants

Poverty has worsened over the last two years and households who are financially unstable increased. An indicator of this is the increase in social grant recipients.

Now, 50% of households in South Africa has at least one person receiving a grant from the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa). This includes all Sassa grants: Child Support, Disability, Old Persons and the Special Relief of Distress (SRD) grant, etc.

At the 55th National Conference of the African National Congress, President Cyril Ramaphosa presented a Political Report where he said:

Another significant intervention against poverty is the provision of social grants, which are the main source of income for about a quarter of households.

In 1999, a little over 2.5 million people in South Africa were receiving Sassa grants. Now, in 2022, this number has grown to be 18 million.

This major increase is of course due to the Covid-19 pandemic which saw many job losses and unemployment in the country worsen. To combat this, government introduced the SRD grant which saw beneficiaries receive R350 per month.

According to Ramaphosa, after this grant was introduced, “about half of all South African households received at least one grant”.

According to estimates by some researchers, without this expansion of social support in the past two years, poverty would have been 5% higher among the poorest households.

7.5 million people had received the SRD grant. However, the number of grant beneficiaries fell below the department’s target. This also demonstrates a decrease in the number of people receiving grants, as around 10.2 million people benefited from the grant in its previous iteration.

This article first appeared on The Skills Portal.