The moderating effect of socioeconomic factors on the relationship between financial inclusion and poverty among South African vulnerable households
- Authors: Khalane, Pontso Violet
- Date: 2023-03-31
- Subjects: Financial inclusion , Poverty South Africa , Socioeconomic status South Africa , Financial sector , South Africa. Financial Sector Regulation Act, 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/419451 , vital:71645
- Description: Vulnerable households are often excluded from the formal financial sector, subsequently experiencing more poverty. Vulnerable households are those that face higher chances of experiencing higher levels of poverty due to their socioeconomic factors. This study aimed to determine the moderating effect of socioeconomic factors on the relationship between financial inclusion and poverty among South African vulnerable households. Poverty is the involuntary lack of monetary and other resources that can afford households with basic human needs and a decent standard of living above a chosen poverty measure. This study measured poverty using a multidimensional measure that incorporated a household’s deprivation of health, education and a decent standard of living. Financial inclusion refers to a process of incorporating vulnerable households into the formal financial sector by ensuring that they receive timely and adequate access to regulated financial products at an affordable price, regardless of their socioeconomic status. This study measured financial inclusion multidimensionally using access to four basic regulated financial products. Socioeconomic factors included gender, race, first or home language, age, the highest level and many more factors. This study was supported by theoretical framework of the vulnerable group theory of financial inclusion, financial development theory, the credit rationing theory and the public goods theory of financial inclusion. The study adopted a quantitative research design. The study used existing data from the FinMark FinScope 2016 South Africa database, which collected data on households’ demographics and their ownership of financial products. Using a closed-ended questionnaire, FinMark FinScope collected the data across South Africa through a multi-probability sampling technique. The final database used in this study after data cleaning contained a sample of 2759 households. The study used descriptive statistics, Pearson’s product-moment correlation, ANOVA and Multiple regression to investigate the factors of the study. The results of the study found a statistically significant relationship between financial inclusion and vulnerable households. The results also found a statistically significant relationship between poverty and vulnerable households. The results further showed a statistically significant negative relationship between financial inclusion and poverty. Lastly, the study found that only socioeconomic factors such as marital status, age as it relates to children and old people moderating effect on the relationship between financial inclusion and poverty among South African vulnerable households. Subsequently, it was concluded that vulnerable households experienced higher levels of poverty in South Africa, and these vulnerable households were less financially included in South Africa. Additionally, it was found that increasing vulnerable households’ access to all regulated financial products could help decrease their poverty levels. The study made several recommendations, which included inter-alia that formal financial institutions design products that specifically meet the needs of vulnerable households. This study also recommended that banks play a central role in facilitating vulnerable households’ affordability of health in South Africa (e.g., offering affordable healthcare products to vulnerable households). Theoretically, this study contributed to the body of literature using multidimensional financial inclusion and poverty, as well as determining the moderating effect of socioeconomic factors. Practically, this study provided insights to the banks on how to develop their products to meet the needs of vulnerable households, help alleviate poverty, and increase the banks’ market into previously unbanked or underbanked segments of the population of South Africa. , Thesis (MCom) -- Faculty of Commerce, Accounting, 2023
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- Date Issued: 2023-03-31
The trade and poverty nexus in South Africa: investigating the transmission mechanism and the associated challenges
- Authors: Bhebhe, Nonceba Fikile
- Date: 2022-10-14
- Subjects: Commerce , Free trade , International trade , Poverty South Africa , Poverty Prevention , South Africa Economic conditions 1991-
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/357515 , vital:64750
- Description: International trade plays an essential role in economic development strategies. In literature, foreign trade is identified as a driver of economic growth. In recent times there has been an expansion in the scope of investigations around the role of international trade to include its links with poverty alleviation. Poverty alleviation is explicitly identified as the first goal on the 2030 agenda for sustainable development under the Sustainable Development Goals and implicitly defined in goal 10. International trade is seen as the engine behind achieving the goal. South Africa records excessive poverty and inequality levels by international standards for a middle-income country. The most recent Poverty Trends Report for 2006 - 2015 reports 55.5% of the population living in poverty. Inequality statistics reported a per capita expenditure Gini coefficient of 0.65 in 2015, evidence that the country has high levels of inequality. The country's severe poverty, unemployment, and inequality prompt policymakers to formulate developmental policies around the underlying structural challenges. Trade openness has increased since the end of the Apartheid era. Despite the increased trade openness, economic growth has been insufficient in reducing the high unemployment and poverty levels, presenting a challenge for economists, who argue that trade openness is pro-growth and pro-poor. In the South African case, the lack of change in the structural challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality has raised concerns over whether the trade policy reforms made since 1994 interfere with development objectives. This study aims to investigate the impact of trade liberalisation on poverty, using the three channels, namely enterprise, distribution, and government that have been researched within the McCulloch, Winters and Cirera framework. Specifically, it investigates the linkages via the transmission mechanism in which trade affects poverty in South Africa by mapping the transmission mechanisms from trade liberalisation to poverty alleviation, whilst identifying the possible challenges to the transmission mechanisms and lastly, analysing the stylised facts around trade and poverty in South Africa. To answer the question of this study, quantitative data from National Income Dynamic Study (NIDS) was merged longitudinally and aggregated with the industry tariff data sourced from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) statistics. A path analysis was undertaken to map the transmission mechanism, whilst descriptive statistics were used to identify the possible associated challenges. The results show that the most significant channel of transmission are the enterprise and distribution channel. However, the effects are of a small margin and a more comprehensive trade policy yield a higher margin of poverty alleviation. , Thesis (MCom) -- Faculty of Commerce, Economics and Economic History, 2022
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- Date Issued: 2022-10-14
A narrative, child-participatory study of domestic mobility within grandmother-headed households in the Eastern Cape, South Africa
- Authors: Lotter, Jaclyn Oehley
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Women heads of households South Africa Eastern Cape , Poor women South Africa Eastern Cape , Migration, Internal South Africa , Poverty South Africa , HIV infections Social aspects South Africa , HIV infections Economic aspects South Africa , AIDS (Disease) Social aspects South Africa , AIDS (Disease) Economic aspects South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7678 , vital:21285
- Description: The movement of adults and children between households in South Africa is a tradition entrenched by apartheid state policies and fuelled by poverty and HIV/AIDS. Children affected by domestic mobility include not only orphans, but those whose families are struggling financially or are deprived of income through illness or death. One example of domestic mobility is the redistribution of children through grandmother-headed households. While domestic mobility has been researched from a number of different academic perspectives, there is scanty psychological literature on the subject, and a gap around children’s experiences of their own mobility. Children’s roles and agency in their mobility, and how these are shaped by their environments, social relations and resilience, are not considered. This research aimed to explore the meanings that domestic mobility had in the lives, identity constructions and personal narratives of South African children currently residing in grandmother-headed households in the Eastern Cape. This was achieved through a narrative approach, interested in big life-stories, as well as small stories of everyday interaction. Over the course of two years, five child participants aged between eight and 12 years constructed narrative material through participatory action research methodologies, including the mapping of time-lines and their lived environments, and photovoice. Child participants and their families were selected from the client-base of a non-governmental organisation, Isibindi (Alice). Narratives were analysed as case studies to tell detailed stories of children’s lives, and to comment on issues associated with domestic mobility, socio-economic status, gender, education, HIV/AIDS and social protection. The study found that blanket definitions of poverty and domestic mobility conceal important variations in levels of poverty and individual experiences of mobility. While children are excluded from processes of decision-making about their mobility, they perform their agency by contributing to household survival and ensuring the continuation of mutually beneficial attachment relationships. This research argues that interventions which act on various systemic levels (macro, meso and exo) add support and protection for vulnerable children. This research also argues for psychological “scaffolding” of potentially traumatic or precarious processes, such as domestic mobility and deaths in families, through caregivers preparing and consulting with children before events happen.
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- Date Issued: 2017