Abstract

Despite the strength and stability of South African economy, poverty and inequality remain a glaring and persistent issue in the country. About 40% of the population live in outright poverty or continuing vulnerability to being poor, with poverty being more persistent in rural areas. The Forster-Greer-Thorbecke index and a Logit econometric model were used to measure the dynamics of poverty among irrigation and non-irrigation individuals and households.

The poverty incidence, depth and severity were found to be higher among non-irrigation household than among irrigation households. In term of poverty depth, it will cost R51.08 per capita to eliminate poverty among small-scale farm families that practice non-irrigated, while R48.00 per capita will be needed to eliminate poverty among small-scale irrigation families.There was significant correlation between income poverty and capability and deprivation poverty. This Implies that policies aimed at mitigating income poverty may also mitigate capability and deprivation poverty.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.