Disability and welfare in South Africa's era of unemployment and AIDS
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2006
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University of Cape Town
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South Africa’s welfare system is exceptional amongst middle-income and developing countries (Seekings, 2005b). It provides generous means-tested noncontributory old-age pensions for the elderly, disability grants for those too ill or incapacitated to work, and child support grants for the care-givers of children. Approximately 10 million social grants are paid out each month, amounting to about 3% of the Gross Domestic Product. But despite this relatively generous level of social assistance, pressure on the welfare system continues to grow – most notably on disability grants which rose from about 600,000 in 2000 to almost 1.3 million in 2004 (see also Nattrass, 2006). This is in part a consequence of the Aids epidemic. As can be seen in Figure 1, South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world. According to the ASSA2003 demographic model, by 2004, half a million new Aids sick cases were occurring each year. Many of these people were able to access disability grants. A recent analysis of a sample of disability grant files reported that the number of disability grants for people suffering from ‘retroviral disease’ or who were ‘immuno-compromised’ rose from 27% in 2001 to 41% in 2003 (CASE, 2005: 63).
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Nattrass, N. (2007). Disability and welfare in South Africa's era of unemployment and AIDS. Centre for Social Science Research: University of Cape Town.