Two Essays on Households' Income Resources, Formation and Income Levels in South Africa

Abstract: With the ambition to further improve the understanding of income generation among the formerly underprivileged and often impoverished majority of households in South Africa, this study of household survey data analyses households' integration into the South African core economy. The emerging picture of household income generation is one that disputes common perceptions of the multitude of means by which African households generate their income. The majority of households under scrutiny rely to large extent on one income source and one income earner. Verbal contextual information and descriptive statistics justify the estimation of separate multinomial logit models for urban and non-urban households, where the probabilities for having either of five main income source categories are outcomes. These regression analyses reveal prominent covariates of low core-economy integration as earners of female gender, old or young earner working-age, and low levels of education. A non-urban household's location in either a former "homeland" or in an area that is agriculturally or commecially developed, yields disparate implications for having the mian income sources and households' demographic compositions which are compatible with findings in South Africa studies both on private transfers behavior and on endogenous household formation.