Two-thirds of the R350 monthly Covid grant recipients are men, while two-thirds of job losers are women: Nic Spaull, senior researcher, Economics, Stellenbosch University.
NOMPU SIZIBA: The first wave of the National Income Dynamics Study for 2020 has been released. It’s the work of some 30 social scientists – researchers who hail from five different South African universities. They conducted the study with the blessing of the presidency. Their focus has been on the extent to which the national lockdown has impacted jobs and incomes, and the socioeconomic impacts that have arisen as a result. Sadly, they’ve found that some three million people lost their jobs from the time of the lockdown. The hope is that this body of work will aid policy makers in dealing with the impacts of Covid-19, which are expected to be long-lasting in nature.
But the second big finding is that women account for 2 million of those 3 million job losses. So women have experienced the greatest job losses since the pandemic started
Well, to give us more detail, I’m joined on the line by Nic Spall, a senior researcher in the economics department of the University of Stellenbosch. Thank you so much, Nic, for joining us. Now, the number of social scientists involved in your study is quite telling in terms of the amount of work that will have needed to be done to get out the data that you’ve produced. Before we get into those details, just take us through the number of people you spoke to, how you conducted your research in these times of Covid-19, and your basic methodology.