Multidimensional Youth Poverty: Estimating the Youth MPI in South Africa at ward level

Abstract

The purpose of this report is to provide a profile of multidimensional youth poverty in South Africa and to map its distribution at ward level, using data collected by Statistics South Africa through the 100% 2011 Census sample. As such, the report makes use of the recently developed Youth Multidimensional Poverty Index (Youth MPI) , which is based on the Alkire Foster method (Alkire & Foster, 2011). The first section of the report describes how the Youth MPI was constructed and outlines some of its limitations. The second section presents the results for South Africa as a whole and then for each province and metropolitan municipality separately. The strength of the Youth MPI based on the 100% 2011 Census sample is that it allows for fine-grained analysis of multidimensional youth poverty at low levels of disaggregation. By mapping the distribution of youth poverty estimates at ward level, this report offers a resource for identifying the areas of greatest need and for targeting youth-related policies and allocating resources more effectively.