Predicted Poverty Impacts of Expanding the Community Work Programme in

An expansion of the CWP to communities around the country has potential to make a significant difference to the lives of millions of poor South Africans and go some way to tackling the unemployment crisis at the heart of the country’s problems. [...] In order to assess the potential impacts we simulate the effect of expanding the CWP to each of the 55 District Councils (DC) in the country. [...] The overall downward shift of the distribution as a result of the CWP wage is obvious and at each of the poverty lines it is clear that a far small- er percentage of the population is poor. [...] Again the ob- jective is to assess the reliability of the CS through comparison with the IES, and then to provide baseline pov- erty and inequality figures upon which we base the effects of the expanded CWP. [...] Poor households with several unemployed members are restricted to one job each and so participation is stretched to include households who are higher up on the income distribution, this reduces the impact on the very poor and explains the decreased movement according to the lower poverty line and the greater effect for those closer to the upper line.