HSF Briefs

Who Are The Hungry Children? And How Far Can Increases In Social Grants Help Them? Evidence From The 2019 General Household Survey.

Hunger, and particularly child hunger, have been discussed recently as a justification for extending the social grant system. This brief probes the relationship between child hunger and social grants using data from the 2019 General Household Survey (GHS).

Alternative Proposals For Electing Constituency Representatives In A Mixed System

This brief considers three proposals on the table for a mixed member proportional (MMP) electoral system for consideration by the National Assembly’s Home Affairs Portfolio Committee, and makes the point that advocacy of an MMP system does not, in itself, settle all the details which will needed to be considered in the process of electoral reform.

The Public Sector Wage Dispute: Understanding the judgment of the Labour Appeal Court

This brief considers and evaluates the reasoning of the Labour Appeal Court in the public sector wage dispute and considers the implications of its judgment, in light of the approach adopted by Treasury in the 2021 Budget.

The World Inequality Lab's A Wealth Tax For South Africa - A Critique II - The Proposal

The first Brief considered the estimation of the distribution of wealth in South Africa as set out in a companion paper to the wealth tax proposal from the World Inequality Lab. This Brief considers the proposal itself.

The World Inequality Lab's A Wealth Tax For South Africa - A Critique I - The Distribution Of Wealth

This Brief updates the HSF's 2018 series on wealth taxes by considering the World Inequality Lab’s A wealth tax for South Africa published in 2021.

Issuing additional short-term government bonds to increase funding for COVID-19 Relief

In a follow up to a brief published in May 2020 on the same topic, this brief explores the possibility of allocating to buyers the full amount of short-term, lower-yielding government bonds for which they bid, and how the availability of this funding option differs with changing circumstances.

Third Quarter Production And Employment Statistics - Some Puzzles

This is the final Brief in the series with all the statistical information about production and employment in the third quarter having now been published. This Brief focuses on puzzles which arise when all the sources are considered together.

The Era of Pandemics: Tomorrow's Forever Wars

We are now more than 250 days into our 21-day lockdown, with Ramaphosa and his Command Council claiming for themselves the power to legislate every aspect of our lives until the invisible enemy is beaten, or maybe even longer, as their rhetoric about the new normal suggests. In asserting this power in their war on the virus, they resemble another executive in a different, still-ongoing war against an equally invisible enemy: the US war on terror.