Title:  Labour market: Analysis of the NIDS wave 1 and 2 datasets

Author(s):  Paul Cichello, Murray Leibbrandt and Ingrid Woolard

Date: 2012

This paper provides a brief summary of key labour market outcomes in Wave 2 of NIDS and also examines labour market transitions that occurred between Wave 1 and Wave 2. This corresponds approximately to changes between 2008 and 2010. The primary purpose of this paper is to spur discussion of these initial findings and to encourage more detailed analytical work on the labour market using the NIDS data.

Title: Self-assessed well-being: Analysis of the NIDS Wave 1 and 2 Datasets

Author(s):  Dorrit Posel

Date:  2012

Most nationally representative household surveys in South Africa collect data on money-metric measures of well-being (income and expenditure), which are then used to generate statistics on poverty and inequality. However, these measures may be limited in several ways. First, they typically are not able to identify differences in economic well-being within the household when all resources in the household are not equally shared. Second, income received or spent captures only one aspect of economic status specifically and of well-being more generally, and a wide range of other factors will also affect an individual's quality of life

Title:  Health: Analysis of the NIDS Wave 1 and 2 Datasets

Author(s):  Cally Ardington and Boingotlo Gasealahwe

Date: 2012

This report examines the health data from the second wave of the NIDS with a view to assessing the strengths and weakness of the data and highlighting the potential of the NIDS panel for the analysis of the relationship between health status and socio-economic status in South Africa. We begin by investigating associations between health and changes in the panel composition. We then examine data quality both within and between the waves, focussing on item non-response within waves and data consistency between waves. The final section examines changes in nutritional status between the waves of the panel. The analyses in this report are descriptive, preliminary and very much intended to illustrate the potential of the NIDS panel for furthering our understanding of the links between health and socio-economic status.

Title:  Education: Analysis of the NIDS Wave 1 and 2 Datasets

Author(s):  Nicola Branson, David Lam and Linda Zuze

Date:  2012

Title:  Income Mobility in South Africa: Evidence from the First Two Waves of the National Income Dynamics Study

Author(s): Arden Finn, Murray Leibbrandt and James Levinsohn

Date:  2012

As is clear from the title of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), one of the major reasons for undertaking South Africa's first national panel study has been to gain an understanding of income mobility. In 2008, a nationally sampled set of South African residents were visited for the first time in wave 1 of NIDS. During this visit, the baseline information was gathered to track and understand changes in their well-being going forward. This sample was nationally representative in order for NIDS to provide an assessment of these changes at the aggregate level. Also, it was large enough to enable NIDS to provide information on key sub-sets of this national story. We need to know who is making progress in terms of escaping poverty, or at least increasing their real income and what factors are driving this. Also, we need to know who is persistently poor and why.

Title:  Wealth in the National Income Dynamics Study Wave 2

Author(s):  Reza C. Daniels, Arden Finn and Sibongile Musundwa

Date:  2012

This document investigates the composition and distribution of individual and household wealth in the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) Wave 2 dataset (SALDRU, 2010-2011). The NIDS Wave 2 instrument marks the first time in South Africa that a nationally representative household survey obtained sufficient information to calculate individual and household net worth. As such, it represents a very important contribution to the stock of knowledge on these concepts, and the dataset itself also contains rich information on concepts related to wealth, such as income, expenditure, savings and debt.

Title:  Child Grants: Analysis of the NIDS Wave 1 and 2 Datasets

Author(s):  Ingrid Woolard, Thabani Buthelezi and Jonathan Bertscher

Date:  2012

This paper provides a brief summary of some key descriptive findings about child grants from the first two waves of the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS). Wave 1 was conducted in 2008 and Wave 2 in 2010/11. The paper has two main purposes – to assess the quality of the NIDS data on child grants and to stimulate discussion of these initial findings with the aim of encouraging more detailed analytical work using the NIDS data.

The Child Support Grant (CSG) is South Africa's largest social cash transfer programme in terms of the number of participants, and is regarded as one of the government's most successful social protection interventions (Samson et al., 2008). Introduced in April 2008, the value of the grant was initially R100 per month but increased over time in line with inflation and at the time of the NIDS Wave 2 survey was worth R250 per month.

The Foster Care Grant (FCG) is designed to provide support for children being cared for outside of their family, particularly orphans or abandoned children. The value of the grant was R710 per month as of April 2010. The Care Dependency Grant is available to children with permanent, severe disabilities. However, because of the small number of children in our sample who report receiving this grant (86 observations), we have omitted them from this paper.