Re-examining the multidimensional poverty index of South Africa

Abstract

Poverty remains one of the main socio-economic issues in South Africa and is more prevalent amongst black African females, children aged below 18 years, and rural residents with low levels of education. Many local studies focused on money-metric measures in determining poverty levels but few studies examined factors other than income that are also important to multidimensional non-income welfare. Therefore, this study re-examined the extent of multidimensional poverty in South Africa with the derivation of a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by considering certain dimensions and indicators that have been ignored in previous studies, such as isolation, vulnerability, voicelessness and powerlessness.