This paper emerges from the Employment and Social Security Project (ESSP) which
formed part of the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) Strengthening
Analytical Capacity in Evidence based Decision making (SACED) programme. The
SACED programme is a partnership between DfID, the South African Department of
Social Development (DSD), the Centre for the Analysis of South African Social Policy
(CASASP) at the University of Oxford and the School of Development Studies at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal.
The main focus of the ESSP was to explore attitudes to paid work and social security
among recipients of Child Support Grant and Disability Grant in South Africa and to
investigate the extent to which there was any evidence of a ‘dependency culture’
emerging amongst grant recipients. The main findings of the project were reported in
Surender et al. 2007and in two related papers (Noble et al. 2008 and Surender et al.
2010). In this paper and in two others (Ntshongwana, 2010a and 2010b) the data
collected in the ESSP are further interrogated in respect of lone mothers in South Africa.
In this paper possible social assistance options for lone mothers are explored using
SAMOD (a tax and social security microsimulation model). One of the other papers
examines low income lone mothers’ experiences of employment and unemployment
(Ntshongwana 2010a) whilst in Ntshongwana (2010b) issues for lone mothers in
relation to child care, paid work and social security are explored.