Research Articles (Social Development- ISD)

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Browsing by Author "Devereux, Stephen"

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    Seasonal food insecurity among farm workers in the Northern Cape, South Africa
    (MPDI, 2019) Devereux, Stephen; Tavener-Smith, Lauren
    Very little is known about seasonal hunger in South Africa, or about the food security and nutritional status of farm workers. This article identifies a pathway to seasonal hunger—through intra-annual fluctuations in agricultural employment and income—that is underanalyzed in the literature. We report on findings from a year-long data collection process, comprising baseline and endline surveys and monthly monitoring of three food security indicators, with a sample of 195 female farm workers in the Northern Cape province in South Africa. The three monthly monitoring indicators—the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS), Dietary Diversity Score (DDS), and Coping Strategies Index (CSI)—which measure different aspects of food insecurity, are analyzed to determine whether and to what extent food security fluctuates seasonally in our sample. HFIAS results show unambiguous evidence of seasonal food insecurity, with the highest prevalence (88 percent experiencing severe food insecurity) and severity during the low employment winter period, and lowest prevalence (49 percent) and severity during the summer harvest, which corresponds with relatively higher employment and earnings.
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    Seasonal food insecurity among farm workers in the Northern Cape, South Africa
    (Nutrients, 2019) Devereux, Stephen; Tavener-Smith, Lauren
    Very little is known about seasonal hunger in South Africa, or about the food security and nutritional status of farm workers. This article identifies a pathway to seasonal hunger—through intra-annual fluctuations in agricultural employment and income—that is underanalyzed in the literature. We report on findings from a year-long data collection process, comprising baseline and endline surveys and monthly monitoring of three food security indicators, with a sample of 195 female farm workers in the Northern Cape province in South Africa. The three monthly monitoring indicators—the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS), Dietary Diversity Score (DDS), and Coping Strategies Index (CSI)—which measure di erent aspects of food insecurity, are analyzed to determine whether and to what extent food security fluctuates seasonally in our sample. HFIAS results show unambiguous evidence of seasonal food insecurity, with the highest prevalence (88 percent experiencing severe food insecurity) and severity during the low employment winter period, and lowest prevalence (49 percent) and severity during the summer harvest, which corresponds with relatively higher employment and earnings. The DDS results show evidence of highest dietary diversity during summer and the CSI results reveal the need to employ coping strategies to deal with intensified food insecurity during winter.
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    Social grants, remittances, and food security: does the source of income matter?
    (Food Security, 2019) Waidler, Jennifer; Devereux, Stephen
    Large numbers of South Africans receive social grants (public transfers) or remittances (private transfers), and yet one in four South Africans is food insecure. The purpose of this paper is to address two questions: do social grants and remittances improve food security and nutritional outcomes? If so, do these impacts differ between public and private transfers? Drawing on the National Income Dynamic Survey (NIDS), South Africa’s first nationally representative survey that follows more than 28,000 individuals over time, we found significant and positive impacts of the Older Person’s Grant and of remittances on the dietary diversity index, but not of the Child Support Grant. Moreover, we found no effect on food expenditure or on anthropometry (BMI) by the Older Person’s Grant, or remittances. However, some positive effects were found on children’s BMI from the Child Support Grant. We discuss why we observe different effects from different transfers, as well as giving several reasons why income transfers are failing to close the nutritional deficits in South Africa.
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    Social protection responses to COVID-19 in Africa
    (SAGE Publications, 2021) Devereux, Stephen
    Most African countries implemented measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 during 2020, such as restrictions on business activity and travel, school closures and stay-at-home lockdowns for several months. These restrictive policies had adverse economic and social consequences that triggered a follow-up wave of expansionist public interventions intended to mitigate these effects. ‘Shock-responsive’ social protection measures included increased benefits to existing beneficiaries (vertical expansion) and registration of new beneficiaries on existing programmes (horizontal expansion). These approaches had the advantages of being quick and administratively simple, but the disadvantage of bypassing people who were made most vulnerable by COVID-19, notably retrenched and informal workers with no access to social insurance. On the other hand, setting up new humanitarian relief or temporary social assistance programmes was slow and susceptible to targeting errors and corruption. COVID-19 also prompted a reassessment of the social contract regarding social protection, with some governments recognising that they need to become better coordinated, more inclusive and rights-based.
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    Violations of farm workers’ labour rights in postapartheid South Africa
    (Development Southern Africa, 2019) Devereux, Stephen
    Commercial farm workers in South Africa endured centuries of exploitation and abuse until the 1990s, when progressive legislation was promulgated that confers rights to workers aimed at improving their living and working conditions, including through a sector-specific statutory minimum wage. However, violations of labour rights are widespread in the agriculture sector, and farm workers are arguably more vulnerable than before as they face ongoing evictions, casualisation and exploitation. This research study, conducted among women farm workers in the Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces, documents labour rights violations in the areas of wages and contracts and occupational health and safety. Apart from farmers themselves, government is responsible for failing to enforce compliance with pro-worker legislation, while trade unions have failed to represent farm workers and hold farmers and government to account.