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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
T
he National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) is SALDRU’s largest ongoing project,
undertaken on behalf of the Presidency. The project, which commenced in
2008, aims to track income, consumption and expenditure of approximately the
same 28 000 individuals and their households over time. Surveys, or waves, are
conducted every second year. In mid-2012, Wave 2 data were released to the
research community via DataFirst, which was subsequently downloaded more than
1 000 times by the end of the year. Downloads of the Wave 1 data are approaching
the 2 000 mark. The release of the data was accompanied by presentations of
preliminary results to the Inter-ministerial Cluster on Poverty Alleviation chaired by
the Deputy President and to a full sitting of the National Planning Commission. In
2012 the fieldwork for Wave 3 was successfully completed; this massive process
required a third visit to each of the 28 000 individuals that make up the NIDS
sample, many of whom have relocated. The release of the NIDS Wave 3 data will
take place in 2013.
After NIDS, the largest SALDRU project is J-PAL Africa, which works to improve the
effectiveness of social programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. 2012 was a remarkably
busy year in the J-PAL Africa office, with a highlight being a large national initiative
that saw the piloting of a number of potential labour market policy interventions.
In addition, a number of other pilot projects evaluating education and health
interventions were trialled in 2012. After this period of careful pre-testing, J-PAL
Africa will be looking to fund full-scale evaluations of a number of the interventions
in 2013.
For SALDRU, producing NIDS panel data as well as its core participation in the
Cape Area Panel Study, a longitudinal study of the lives of youths and young adults
in metropolitan Cape Town, is a means to the end of enabling SALDRU researchers
(and the researcher community in general) to investigate South Africa’s evolving
Southern Africa
Labour And Development
Research Unit (SALDRU)
This is a dream research agenda as it combines maximum
social relevance with the possibility of frontier social science.
In the contemporary world, researchers are being called to
provide evidence-based policy research in the context of rapidly
changing societies. Those working on post-apartheid South
Africa have faced this challenge for close to two decades and
SALDRU’s 2012 work programme evidences recognition of the
fact that this has prepared us to make a significant contribution
to the international research enterprise.