Durban — More than 1 million households in the country have severely inadequate access to food, while more than 2 million have inadequate access.
This is according to Statistics South Africa’s recent publication, Assessing food inadequacy and hunger in South Africa in 2021 using the General Household Survey (GHS).
It said that almost eight out of 10 households (approximately 14.2 million) reported that they had adequate food access.
“Rural households had a higher percentage of households experiencing inadequate and severely inadequate food access compared with their urban counterparts.”
It found that a higher proportion of women-headed households reported inadequate (16.5%) and severely inadequate access to food (7.6%), which was higher than the national average in both these categories of food access.
“On the other hand, 81.3% of maleheaded households reported adequate food access which is also higher than the national average of 79.1%. Households headed by African/blacks and coloureds are still mainly represented among those that reported inadequate and severe inadequate access to food compared with those headed by Indians/Asians and whites.”
It said that Gauteng (25.3%) followed by KwaZulu-Natal (17.5%) and the Western Cape (14.0%) had the highest proportion of households that reported experiencing hunger in 2021.
“Two-thirds of those households that experienced hunger are located in urban areas. The City of Cape Town (11.6%) and the City of Johannesburg (11.5%) have the highest proportions of households that experienced hunger in all the six metros. More than half of the households that reported experiencing hunger are male-headed and more than 90% are headed by an African/black.”
It said that a quarter of households that reported experiencing hunger in the whole country were in Gauteng with almost half of them concentrated in the City of Johannesburg.
“KwaZulu-Natal (17.5%) has the second highest percentage of those households followed by the Western Cape (14.0%).”
The report said research had found that the highest proportion (80.7%) of households that reported sufficient food access were those with no young children.
“On the other hand, 76.4% of households with one child reported sufficient access to food and 6.6% had experienced severe inadequate access to food.
“Households with more young children are more predisposed to having inadequate access to food.”
The report stated that almost two thirds of households with more than three young children had reported sufficient food access. This category also had the highest proportion of households that reported severe inadequate access to food of 17.2%.
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