CHILDREN in households that receive a government child support grant grow taller, are less likely to repeat a grade at school and benefit from increased expenditure on food, compared with "adult products" like alcohol and cigarettes, says a recent research paper published by online policy forum Econ3x3.
The paper adds to a growing body of evidence that welfare grants have been effective in reducing household poverty. It takes this analysis one step further to show that children specifically benefit from the support grant as their wellbeing measurably improves.
About 11-million children will benefit this year from the grant of R310 a month.
The paper by University of Stellenbosch economics lecturer Marisa Coetzee compares the education, nutrition and health of children whose caregivers have received the grant for a large part of the children’s lives compared with those who received it for less time.
Ideally such a study would set out to compare children who receive the grant with a control group of identical children who do not. As such a group would be difficult to find, the study has taken the next-best solution of comparing eligible children who have received the grant for varying periods.
Assessing this against data from the National Income Dynamics Study of 2008, Ms Coetzee found among children who received the grant for 10 percentage points longer than others, there is a 1cm difference in height for age. In terms of normal patterns of height, the difference is significant, she says.
The probability of repeating a school year decreases by about four percentage points. Since the average probability in the sample is 20%, this is also statistically significant.
Households that have received the grants for longer tend to spend more money on food per person than on adult goods such as alcohol and tobacco. Food expenditure went up about 3% and spending on adult goods down 1%. While these might seem small variations, their effect is greater than appears.
This is because the size of the grant is quite small — R210 in 2008 — in a household where average total monthly expenditure is R2,300. It is also because the comparison is between those who received the grant for a longer period and those who got it for a shorter period, rather than those who never got it.
"Taken in this context, it is clear that there are significant positive benefits to receiving the child support grant ," said Ms Coetzee.
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