Cause for concern
Should policymakers in South Africa be concerned? The charts on page 95 suggest why they may not be.
The same 2014 Stats SA report on South Africa’s older persons concludes that:
- 40% of the elderly in South Africa are poor
- 33% make an average living
- 27% are classified as rich ... with 80.7% of whites and 71.2% of Indians or Asians sitting firmly in that ‘rich’ categorisation
So, the white and Indian or Asian populations may have a problem on the horizon, but many will have the financial resources to potentially manage it. For the majority of the black and coloured populations, there are no warning signs, no dependency problems. Surely the family reciprocity system will provide the necessary support for now7?
The traditional family support model – will it hold?
For now, at least, 72% of the noninstitutionalised8 elderly population in South Africa live in multigenerational households9. The irony is that the more economically successful South Africans become, the greater the strain placed on that support model. As Figure 5 shows, these extended households are mostly in the more rural provinces, with single and nuclear-family living arrangements dominating the urbanised provinces of the Western Cape and Gauteng.
On the surface, our data analysis suggests different populations will have very different priorities for addressing the dynamic of ageing in South Africa. But that could be a short-lived illusion, as we shall discover in our next section. Understanding the interplay between the different trajectories of these population groups will have implications for addressing the needs of all South Africans.