With around half of South Africans suffering some form of poverty, businesses looking at the country need to understand the dynamic that poverty responses will continue to drive SA's social agenda.
"It determines a lot of what happens if you are doing business here," said a researcher from the IHS, David Wilson.
Speaking at an IHS Global Insight economic outlook conference at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton, he said that 60% of people in the country suffer from human capital and service poverty.
And inequality is getting worse - with income poverty at 40% and growth not due to hit 4% between 2009-2014, he expects poverty rates to stagnate.
Social grants are not the solution as they are only helping the lowest quartile of the poor improve their standards of living - the rest are still not being pulled above the poverty line.
What's more, the radical increases since 2002 in the number of people receiving grants - from 3 million to 13 million now - is making it more difficult and costly to roll out services.
Wilson's research shows that faster access to services has not meant there are not going to be protests, because the better access actually lifts expectations.
"Expect service delivery protests to continue going forward," he says.
He says poverty is a structural problem that requires long-term solutions, like education and capital spending (the right tools to the right people).
The solution, he says, is to increase the productivity of individual citizens.
Business must understand poverty impact
With around half of South Africans suffering some form of poverty, businesses looking at the country need to understand the dynamic that poverty responses will continue to drive SA's social agenda.
"It determines a lot of what happens if you are doing business here," said a researcher from the IHS, David Wilson.
Speaking at an IHS Global Insight economic outlook conference at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton, he said that 60% of people in the country suffer from human capital and service poverty.
And inequality is getting worse - with income poverty at 40% and growth not due to hit 4% between 2009-2014, he expects poverty rates to stagnate.
Social grants are not the solution as they are only helping the lowest quartile of the poor improve their standards of living - the rest are still not being pulled above the poverty line.
What's more, the radical increases since 2002 in the number of people receiving grants - from 3 million to 13 million now - is making it more difficult and costly to roll out services.
Wilson's research shows that faster access to services has not meant there are not going to be protests, because the better access actually lifts expectations.
"Expect service delivery protests to continue going forward," he says.
He says poverty is a structural problem that requires long-term solutions, like education and capital spending (the right tools to the right people).
The solution, he says, is to increase the productivity of individual citizens.