Women, income and poverty: Gendered access to resources in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Far-reaching changes in the post-apartheid period in South Africa are likely to have affected gendered access to resources In this Article. we use nationally representative household survey data to examine whether trends in the extent of income poverty over a recent ten-year period have been gendered We find that females are more likely than males to live in poor households Poverty rates have fallen from 1997 to 2006. and particularly following the expansion of the social grant system However, the decline in poverty rates has been larger among males than among females Higher levels of unemployment and lower earnings among women, as well as changes in household structure, help explain why the gender gap in poverty rates has widened over the period We find also that female-headed households are far more vulnerable to income poverty than male-headed households and further, that the extent of poverty has fallen by more among households headed by men However, we show that there are significant differences in poverty risks not only among female-headed households, but also among male-headed households, depending on the employment status of household members