The General Household Survey (GHS) tracks the progress of development and identifies persistent service delivery gaps. Now in its eighteenth year, the survey has yielded a rich set of information across a wide variety of fields, and the following figures summarise some of the most significant findings from the report. 

 The main objective of development is to improve the human condition. It is, therefore, important to understand the social and demographic context in which it takes place. Household growth outstripped population growth over the period 2002−2019 (2,4% per annum compared to 1,3% per annum). Since households are the basic units for service delivery, rapid household growth will arguably have a bigger impact on the delivery of basic services, particularly at local level, than population growth alone.

 Approximately one-quarter (23,4%) of households consisted of a single person, while three-fifths (60,7%) had fewer than four members. North West had the highest incidence of single person households (28,3%) while households that contained more than six members were most common in KwaZulu-Natal (18,9%) and Mpumalanga (18,3%).

 Nuclear households that are comprised of parents and children made up 39,9% of all households. The survey shows that 40,1% of households consisted of two generations while 14,7% contained at least three generations. Skip generation households that matched grandparents with grandchildren made up 4,5% of all households. The latter were most common in Eastern Cape (8,5%). The survey shows that 41,8% of households were headed by females.

 Families and households are profoundly important to the developmental, emotional and cognitive growth of children and parents and/or caregivers can play a central role in this development. The survey found that 21,3% of children lived with neither their biological parents while 32,7% lived with both parents, and 42,0% lived with their mothers. Approximately 14,4% of children were orphaned, having lost one or both parents.

 ECD programmes are offered at day-care centres, crèches, playgroups, nursery schools and in pre-primary schools. Almost four-tenths (36,8%) of the 0–4-year-olds attended these kinds of facilities and access to these facilities was highest in Gauteng (46,8%) and Western Cape (46,9%). One-half (50,2%) of children aged 0-4 years stayed at home with parents or guardians.

 There were approximately 14,6 million learners at school in 2019. Participation in education institutions was virtually universal (96,6%) by the age of 15 years (the last compulsory school age). Approximately two-thirds (64,3%)  of learners were still in school by the age of 18 which usually represents the age at which learners exit grade 12. A notable percentage of learners, however, remained in primary and secondary schools long after they should have exited those institutions. Almost one-quarter (24,3%) of twenty-year olds were, for instance, still attending secondary school. While the percentage of learners who have achieved grade 12 has been increasing, the survey shows that the percentage of individuals who attended post-school education has remained relatively low for youth aged 19 to 22 years of age. The percentage of students attending universities, technical and vocational colleges remain very similar throughout the reference period.

The percentage of learners that attended no-fee schools increased from 21,4% in 2007 to 66,2% by 2019. More than one-fifth (21,6%) of learners who have dropped out of school before the age of 18 years, however, put forward a lack of money (‘no money for fees’) as the main reason. Other reasons included poor academic performance (22,6%), family commitments (8,6%) and a feeling that education is useless (8,0%).

 The percentage of individuals aged 20 years and older who did not have any education decreased from 11,4% in 2002 to 3,7% in 2019, while those with at least a grade 12 qualification increased from 30,5% to 46,2% over the same period. Inter-generational functional literacy has also decreased markedly. While 38,2% of South Africans over the age of 60 years did not at least complete a grade 7 qualification, this figure dropped to only 4,5% for those aged 20 ̶ 39 years of age.

 Social grants remain a vital safety net, particularly in the poorest provinces. The percentage of households and persons who benefitted from a social grant have increased notably since 2003. While 30,9% of persons benefitted from a grant in 2019, 45,5% of household received one or more grants. Grants were the second most important source of income (46,2%) for households after salaries (62,2%), and the main source of income for about one-fifth (20,4%) of households nationally. A larger percentage of households received grants compared to salaries as a source of income in Eastern Cape (61,1% versus 49,7%) and Limpopo (59,0% versus 49,6%). Grants were particularly important as a main source of income for households in Eastern Cape (37,5%), Limpopo (30,8%) and Northern Cape (28,6%).                                                                  

The report shows that 81,9% of all households resided in formal dwellings in 2019. Although the percentage of households that have received some kind of government subsidy to access housing has increased from 5,6% in 2002 to 13,7% by 2019, 12,7% of households still lived in informal dwellings. This could be attributed to the fact that rapid household growth and population relocation is making it very difficult to address existing backlogs in the face of fresh demands.

 The percentage of households with access to an improved source of water increased by less than four percentage points between 2002 and 2019 (growing from 84,4% to 88,2%). The increases were much more notable in Eastern Cape (+17,8 percentage points) and KwaZulu-Natal (+10,0 percentage points).

Despite these notable improvements, access to water actually declined in five provinces between 2002 and 2019. The largest declined was observed in Mpumalanga (-5,3 percentage points), Limpopo (-3,8 percentage points) and Free State (-3,7 percentage points).  The declines, however, belie the fact that more households had access to piped water in 2019 than eighteen years earlier. While the number of households with access to water in the dwelling increased by 70,5% (3,2 million households) between 2002 and 2019, growing from 4,5 million to 7,7 million, the percentage of households with access to water in the dwelling only increased by 4,5% percentage points over the same period.

Through the provision and the efforts of government, support agencies and existing stakeholders, the percentage of households with access to improved sanitation increased by 20,4 percentage points between 2002 and 2019, growing from 61,7% to 82,1%. Most improvement was noted in Eastern Cape where the percentage of households with access to improved sanitation increased by 54,1 percentage points to 87,6%, and Limpopo in which access increased by 36,5 percentage points to 63,4%. The installation of pit toilets with ventilation pipes played an important part in achieving the large improvements.  A range of reasons, including rapid household growth and urbanisation, as well as a preference for flush toilets have all contributed to the slow progress over the reference period. The relative scarcity of water and regular water interruptions experienced in many parts of the country will increasingly lead to the use of alternative sources of sanitation.                                                                                      

An increase in the percentage of households that were connected to the electricity supply from the mains from 76,7% in 2002 to 85,0% in 2019, was accompanied by a decrease in the use of wood (20,0% to 7,8%) and paraffin (16,1% to 3,9%) over the same period. The common use of wood for cooking purposes in rural provinces such as Limpopo (32,1%) and Mpumalanga (16,7%) is, however, an indication that available resources are still very accessible and, most likely, less expensive than using electricity. One quarter (24,9%) of households did not use electricity for cooking in 2019, preferring to use gas (4,2%), paraffin (3,9%) and ‘Other sources’, such as solar electricity.  

 It is striking that the percentage of households whose solid waste was removed weekly or less often declined from 66,4% in 2018 to 61,5% in 2019, the lowest this figure has been for more than a decade. Although the decline might, at least in part, be associated with a reduction in the number of response options offered in the measurement instrument, it was accompanied by an increase in the percentage of households that reported used their own refuse dumps. Although household recycling is extremely important to ameliorate the huge negative impact household waste is having on the environment, the report found that more than four-fifths (80,6%) of metropolitan households did not separate waste for recycling, and that only 6,1% actively recycled household waste.