Limpopo province is often described as one of the poorest provinces in the country. Thousands of families survive on government grants, and unemployment is rife. But are we really that poor?
A newly released report by Statistics South Africa (SSA) looks at poverty in a slightly different way, telling us far more about what is really happening in Limpopo. How many residents believe they are poor, as opposed to simply earning less than a minimum income guideline?
In this SSA report, poverty is viewed in a holistic way. “There has been a lot of debate about the best approach to measure poverty because the poor themselves consider their experience of poverty much more broadly. Therefore, focusing on one factor alone such as income, is not sufficient to capture the true reality of poverty,” the introduction to the report reads.
The research focuses on three specific indicators: self-perceived wealth, the minimum income required to make ends meet, and an evaluation of current earnings against those needs.
Based on objective poverty – we are struggling
A more traditional approach to defining poverty is to consider a “poverty line”, which refers to a set amount of income for an individual. Anything below that means you are poor.
Not everyone was happy with this “us and them” approach, and since 2012 SSA has introduced more categories, such as a food poverty line, a Lower-Bound Poverty Line (LBPL) and an Upper-Bound Poverty Line (UBPL). These lines capture different degrees of poverty and allow the country to measure and monitor poverty at different levels.
The LBPL, which uses the food poverty line as a base, is used to compare provinces. In this measure, Limpopo did not fare well. In 2023, 47,6% of individuals in Limpopo lived below the LBPL, significantly higher than the national average of 37,9%. This places the province among the four poorest in the country, following KwaZulu-Natal (49,6%), North West (49,1%) and the Eastern Cape (48,2%).
The figures, however, produced an interesting paradox. Despite these high poverty rates, Limpopo reported the highest average annual household consumption expenditure in the country for households living below the LBPL. Annual household expenditure came in at R57,059, much higher than the national average of R52,179 for poor households.
But do we believe we are poor?
“Subjective poverty … refers to the perceptions of individuals or households on what constitutes a socially acceptable standard of living in a society, from which they make judgements on whether they view themselves as poor or not,” the SSA report explains.
In essence, this means poverty is defined by much more than the amount of money reflected in your bank account at the beginning of the month. It is influenced by factors such as access to basic services, health, education and housing. If you have to walk several kilometres to fetch water, or buy it from a neighbour, it affects your standard of living. If you pay minimal rent for your house at the tribal office, you may be in a better position than someone in a city who has to pay an excessive amount to a landlord.
Respondents were first asked to rate their household, with “wealthy” at the highest level and “very poor” at the lowest. In Limpopo, 37,4% of individuals perceived themselves as poor or very poor, notably higher than the national average of 25,7%.
Respondents were then asked what they considered to be the absolute minimum income needed to survive. If this figure was higher than the reported per capita household consumption, the household and its members were classified as poor.
Using the Minimum Income Question (MIQ) indicator, 43,8% of people in Limpopo were classified as poor, slightly above the national rate of 41,3%.
Finally, respondents were asked whether their household’s monthly income exceeded the minimum income they claimed was needed to survive. Here, Limpopo recorded a 55% poverty rate, compared with 51,4% nationally.
The poor stay far from the cities
In 2023, when the data was collected, the likelihood of living in objective poverty (LBPL) remained far greater for those in non-urban areas (54,7%) than for those in urban areas (29,1%). Similarly, the Self-Perceived Wealth Question (SPWQ) indicator showed that 35,1% of non-urban residents perceived themselves as poor, compared with 20,7% in urban areas.
Non-urban areas have a much larger objective poverty gap (22,1%) than urban areas (10,3%). The objective poverty gap measures the depth of poverty, indicating how far, on average, individuals or households are from reaching the income or expenditure level required to no longer be considered poor.
Interestingly, the subjective poverty gap (MIQ) was slightly smaller for non-urban areas (15,9%) than for urban areas (16,5%), suggesting a different perception of income adequacy in these settings.
Non-urban areas generally have lower access to basic services. The sources note that the objective poverty indicator, which is heavily concentrated in non-urban areas, is closely associated with a lack of piped drinking water and access to flush toilets.
The idyllic notion that people in non-urban areas are content and that real poverty is mostly found in places such as informal settlements in cities is not accurate. The SSA report shows that Limpopo consistently experiences higher levels of both objective and subjective poverty compared with national averages, while individuals in non-urban areas face a significantly greater likelihood of living in objective poverty than those in urban centres.