Browsing by Subject "Mobility"

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    Open Access
    Access to assistive technology in two Southern African countries
    (BioMed Central, 2018-10-19) Matter, Rebecca A; Eide, Arne H
    Background Millions of people in Southern Africa are deprived of basic human rights such as the right to education and work because of the large and growing unmet demand for assistive technologies (AT). Evidence is needed to better characterize the lack of AT access. Methods This study serves to identify the sociodemographic factors that are associated with access to AT in two countries in Southern Africa, Botswana and Swaziland. To achieve this aim, logistics regression was applied to a subset of variables from two Living Conditions Studies, nationally representative surveys that were conducted in Southern Africa (2014 and 2010). Results In Botswana, 44% of people who needed AT did not receive it, while in Swaziland the unmet need was 67%. Among the sociodemographic variables tested, the type of disability was the most important factor in determining AT access in both countries. The likelihood of AT access was highest in both countries for those who had mobility limitations (i.e., difficulty walking/climbing stairs) [Botswana: 6.4 odds ratio (OR) = 6.4., 95% confidence internal (CI) (3.6–11.3); Swaziland: OR = 3.2, CI (1.4–7.3)], in comparison to those with non-mobility types of disabilities. Conclusions These findings provide support for governments and other stakeholders in the AT sector to prioritize AT to address the large unmet demand, and expand the range of AT products provided so that people with hearing, seeing, self-care, communication and cognition difficulties have equal access to AT as those with mobility impairments. A step toward achieving these aims is to inventory AT product types that are commonly covered through the public sector in each country, and identify common gaps (e.g., daily living aids). Advancing the AT sector as a whole within Southern Africa will require large scale qualitative studies that achieve a comprehensive understanding of the bottlenecks in regional AT supply, procurement, and delivery systems.
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    Open Access
    Intergenerational mobility in South Africa: how much has South Africa changed since the early 1990s?
    (2025) Ressom, Hagos; Wittenberg, Martin; Branson Nicola
    South Africa has been grappling with persistently high rates of poverty, unemployment, and inequality. These unfortunate realities have their roots in the country's colonial and apartheid past, the legacy of which continues to influence the post-apartheid socioeconomic outcomes. This thesis examines changes over time in the relationship between the education and earnings of South African parents and their children once these are adults. The study uses two independent surveys, one collected in the early 1990s and the other in 2017. The timing of the two surveys enables for an examination of changes in mobility during the first 25 years of democracy. The study contributes to the South African literature on inequality by enriching and extending the cross-sectional empirical evidence on trends in educational and earnings inequality to the intergenerational dimension. The study shows that while intergenerational education mobility has increased considerably, earnings persistence has remained high and almost unchanged between the two periods. Intergenerational relative education mobility, as measured by the intergenerational correlation coefficient, decreased from 0.72 in the first period to 0.43 in the second. On the other hand, intergenerational earnings persistence remained high, with the elasticity estimated to be 0.73 in the first period and 0.70 in the second (among currently employed). These results demonstrate that the well-documented cross-sectional trends in educational and earnings inequality in the post-apartheid period are paralleled in the intergenerational dimension. The study further highlights the continued relevance of parental education to earnings, with the effect of parental education on children's earnings shown to be significant and positive in both periods. The contribution of parental education to children's earnings inequality, however, has been small (relative to the contribution of own education) in both periods. The thesis concludes by emphasizing on the contrasting trends in intergenerational education and earnings inequality in the post-apartheid period and recommends that fixing the quality of education could go a long way in addressing the persistently high levels of intergenerational earnings persistence.
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    Winners and losers: South African labour market dynamics between 2008 and 2010
    (Development Southern Africa, 2015-05-28) Cichello, Paul; Leibbrandt, Murray; Woolard, Ingrid