Public assets and services delivery in South Africa: Is it really a success?
Abstract
Poverty alleviation remains a pressing concern for South African policy-makers. Implementing
effective anti-poverty policies requires a clear understanding of the nature and extent of
poverty. The extant literature on South African poverty dynamics shows a decline in the
headcount ratio over the first decade of the twenty-first century. However, the prior research
largely adopts a narrow money-metric approach, or uses multi-dimensional indices that include
welfare indicators based on private assets (e.g. television sets) or those that are provided
publicly (e.g. access to water). This paper uses multiple correspondence analysis to measure
non-income poverty trends for the period 2005–12. The novelty in this undertaking lies in an
attempt to include a measure of the perceived quality of public assets and services to
complement the standard indices. This provides some measure of ‘success’ of public service
delivery, accounting for both changes in access and quality.