AN ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC ANTECEDENTS OF HOUSING INSECURITY

Year 2018, Volume: 10 Issue: 2, 40 - 56, 31.12.2018

Steven Henry Dunga Wcj Grobler

Abstract

The study of poverty has remained in the forefront of both
development practitioners and researchers alike; however, the number
of poor people remains high throughout the world. Housing security,
food security and water security can be seen as central to urban
poverty alleviation, and form part of a declaration of the Habitat
Conference in Vancouver Canada, in 1976. Housing insecurity is
consequently one of the so many faces of poverty. This paper
analyses the socio-economic antecedents associated with housing
insecurity and homelessness. There are a number of definitions of
housing insecurity, of which homelessness is the extreme. The impact
of housing insecurity is even severe among children and becomes
perpetual due to the consequences of homelessness, which include no
schooling, poor health and exposure to crime. This paper presents the
conceptualisation of housing insecurity and a review of the socioeconomic antecedents of housing insecurity and its extreme state of
hopelessness. The paper uses the general household survey data
collected by STATSSA with a sample of 21 601 households. A
regression model is employed in determining the household’s
characteristics that are associated with housing insecurity. Income
food security status and material of the structure were some of the
factors that significantly predicted household housing insecurity. The
paper also proposes a framework to develop a succinct measure of housing insecurity as a second step in the series of developing the
literature on housing insecurity in South Africa.

Keywords

: housing insecurity; households; antecedents

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