Hundreds of statistics collectors will be going into South African households over the next year for data collection for the Income and Expenditure Survey (IES).

The survey will begin this month and will run until the end of 2023 and is critical to measuring poverty and inequality in the country.

At the launch of the survey, Statistician General Risenga Maluleke, said although the survey comes nearly seven years after the first, it comes at a ideal time for the country.

“The funding and preparation of the IES comes at a time when there is an ever-increasing demand for data in South Africa to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on household finances and the economy at large.

“This will be the first expenditure survey to be conducted by Stats SA since 2014/15, following allocation of specific funding by National Treasury,” Maluleke said.

As well as providing essential insights needed to measure poverty and inequality, the survey will provide information to help government reach the National Development Plan 2030 goals of reducing the bounds of the poverty line to zero and reducing the Gini coefficient to 0.6.

“We will update and reweight our Consumer Price Index basket of goods and services. On the economic side, we will profile the household economy. [The survey will help] make inputs for the development and maintenance of the national public accounts and of course life circumstances like service delivery and poverty.

“We will [also] make sure that we deal with updating the multidimensional and subjective poverty profile and of course updating the profile on issues of inequality in the context of poverty,” he said.

Collectors will gather information from some 31 000 households on all purchases, consumption, spending and income earned.

Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) explained that households will participate in the survey over a period of four weeks.  

“During this time, a household questionnaire containing four modules will be administered (i.e. one module per week) and respondents will also be asked to keep a weekly expenditure diary supplied by Stats SA to record their daily acquisitions and purchases for a period of two weeks.

“The IES survey will also help South Africa better understand the impact of social grants in reducing poverty,” the institution said.

Source: South African Government News Agency