A policy instrument to relieve child poverty: The case of the child support grant in South Africa

Abstract

While various scholarly literature report on instances of public policy failure, reported case studies on public policy successes are seemingly rare. The subsequent purpose of this study was to contribute to the latter body of literature by attempting to make sense of a South African social assistance policy instrument, namely the Child Support Grant. This case study set out to obtain a deepened understanding of the phenomenon of successful policy instruments. An exploratory qualitative approach within the interpretive research tradition was selected for making sense of this case. The material for this study was of a documentary nature, consisting of scholarly and official documents. A hermeneutical reading process was applied. From the source material, a chronology of this specific social assistance programme (the Child Support Grant) was constructed to stretch over a period of nearly three decades (1992-2020). The chronology revealed the development of an exceptionally stable policy programme, starting with about 20 000 beneficiaries in 1998 and reaching approximately 12.5 million beneficiaries in 2019. Nearly all research reports have described the programme as highly successful. In an attempt to make sense of the reasons for the apparent success, a conceptual framework has been designed to understand the interplay between the context, antecedents, defining attributes and consequences of this programme. By applying this framework, as well as theoretical lenses on policy success and political regime, it was possible to obtain a nuanced preliminary understanding of the labels of success attached to this programme. This study has shown that a social assistance policy programme in the context of widespread and deep-rooted poverty can achieve the measurable success criteria of its ultimate poverty alleviating goals. However, the sustainability of such a programme depends on the continued improvement of antecedent factors. These include administrative implementation, eligibility criteria and targeting, as well as the success of other targeted programmes within the same and related policy regimes, sustained affordability and continued political support.