Facts in Q&A format

For 2022, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) estimates the mid-year population at 60,60 million people. Approximately 51,1% (approximately 30,98 million) of the population is female. ...

A 2006 analysis of teenage fertility trends found that there were “no grounds to believe that young South African girls are deliberately having children in order to access welfare benefits”.According to the research, teenage childbearing had not increased after the grant was introduced in 1998. ...

An estimated 59.6 million people lived in South Africa in 2020. ...

About 28.6% of the population (17.1 million people) was aged 14 or younger in 2020. See figures for other age groups here. ...

In 2018, the World Bank estimated that South Africa’s Gini coefficient was 0.63 in 2015. This was based on individual consumption – one of the ways to measure income inequality. It put South Africa at the top of a list of 164 countries. However, some countries do not have the data ne...

In 2015, an estimated 64.2% of black (African) people were considered to be poor as defined by the upper-bound poverty line – the highest of three poverty lines.An estimated 41.3% of coloured people; 5.9% of Indian/Asian people and 1% of white people were also deemed poor.More: Frequently asked qu...

In March 2019 – the last month of the 2018/19 financial year – a total of 17,811,745 social grants were being paid....

Fifteen-year-olds are included in the working-age population because you can leave school at the end of the year in which you turn 15. If a 15-year-old is without work in the week before the Quarterly Labour Force Survey interview, looked for work in the four weeks before the interview and was av...

No, they are considered employed, as long as they did that activity (e.g. trade) for at least one hour in the week before the Quarterly Labour Force Survey interview. ...