Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) estimates the population of South Africa to be 54 million as at July 2014, where about 30,0% of the population is aged younger than 15 years and approximately 8,4% (4,54 million) is 60 years or older. The Mid-year population estimates further indicate that approximately fifty-one per cent (approximately 27,64 million)   read more »

More people rely on state coffers as the percentage of individuals that benefited from social grants has increased from 12,7% in 2003 to 30,2% in 2013, and the percentage of households that received at least one grant increased from 29,9% to 45,5%. This is according to the latest results of the General Household Survey (GHS)   read more »

Hitting the ceiling of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) inflation target range, the CPI comes in at 6% this month, with a 1,3% monthly increase. The monthly increase is the largest since June 2008 (1,4%). The monthly increase has been steadily increasing since a low of 0,1% in November 2013. Food and non-alcoholic beverages   read more »

It would appear that South Africans are quite happy to wear out their shoe leather by walking to nearby destinations. Across all provinces, the majority of respondents indicated that they used their own energy to get to where they were going if their destination was nearby. Northern Cape had the lowest percentage of travellers who   read more »

A new report on the living circumstances of young children shows that, while 93% of young children have both biological parents still living, only 36% of them live with both biological parents. Most young children (43%) live with only their biological mother, 2% live with their biological father only, and 19% do not live with   read more »

Municipalities in Gauteng province are better off in terms of generating their own revenue in the form of services provided to households, while at the same time they are also getting a bigger share of the grants and subsidies received from both national and provincial governments in proportion to the increase in total population.  The   read more »

The Financial statistics of provincial government release reports that compensation of employees increased by R23 798 million from R193 669 million in 2010/2011 to R217 467 million in 2011/2012. This increase was mainly due to increased compensation payments by the KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and Eastern Cape provincial governments. Figure 1: Compensation of employees by province: 2011-2012 (Rm, at current prices)   read more »

The provision of basic services such as water went up by 6,4% between 2011 and 2012 nationally. The highest provincial increases were recorded in Western Cape (19,6%) and Gauteng (7,2%). The extent of service delivery at local government level is normally obtained from households through population censuses and general household surveys. However, the suppliers (the   read more »

22 August 2013 Stats SA’s General Household Survey (GHS) released today shows improvements in key service delivery sectors, as well as a decline in the perceived quality of these services. The GHS 2012 report, conducted between July and September 2012, shows an increase in the number of households who had access to piped water, sanitation   read more »

Background On 05 August 2013, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) published an ‘Agricultural households’ report which is based on Population Census 2011 (Census 2011). This report covers all types of agriculture, namely subsistence, smallholder and commercial. This is an important milestone since as a country, we are taking the first step to better understand and   read more »