Key findings: 03-10-25 - Subjective Poverty in South Africa: Findings from General Household Survey 2019, 2022

In general, there’s a declining pattern of subjective poverty with poverty levels declining for two of the three indicators (i.e. MIQ and IEQ) and stayed the same for one indicator (i.e. SPWQ). According to the MIQ measure, results show that the percentage of households identified as poor declined from 57,0% in 2019 to 51,6% in 2022. Similarly, households being classified as poor declined from 46,7% to 45,4% in the same period, based on the IEQ measure. Meanwhile, the SPWQ measure shows that the percentage of households who perceived themselves as poor remained almost the same at approximately 26,5% between 2019 and 2022.