Poverty studies have received unprecedented attention in the past

Poverty is a worldwide quandary and despite global efforts to culminate it, progress in this regard has been slow and in some parts of the world, the plight has worsened. Ensuring adequate resource provision for their families and consequently evading poverty proves to be a challenge for some household heads, particularly millennials. This study therefore seeks to analyse the prevalence of poverty in households headed by millennials based on their characteristics. The study employed data from the 2021 General Household Survey of Statistics South Africa with a sample of 2685 millennial heads. The findings reveal that households headed by millennials who are males, African; single, divorced, and unemployed are vulnerable to poverty. Further findings indicate that households where the head had a tertiary qualification and was employed were less vulnerable to poverty. It can therefore be construed that head of household characteristics have a bearing on a household’s wellbeing and the future outcomes of the children in their households. Policies enacted by government needs to create realistic opportunities that will enable millennials to sustain themselves and their households.

The need to deal with poverty and child poverty in particular cannot be overemphasised. Children

(1) Background: An effective and efficient primary healthcare service is one of the reforms designed to achieve universal healthcare coverage. The success of the reform however depends on the ability to identify factors that could undermine through avoidable use, the effectiveness of various deployed scarce resources. The prevalence of unhealthy lifestyle risk factors that have been identified as a critical public health issue, which stimulate vulnerability and mortality through the development of non-communicable diseases, also have implications for government health spending through healthcare utilization. (2) Objective: This study aims to investigate the effect of behavioral risk factors on primary healthcare utilization in South Africa. (3) Methods: Using the NIDS wave 4 data set and a binary logistic estimation technique, the study is premised on a modified Anderson model of health service utilization. (4) Results: The binary logistic regression estimation results clearly show the intercepting effect of smoking in public primary healthcare utilization. Equally, the effect of these lifestyle behavior risk factors on public PHC is evident in urban communities. (5) Conclusion: This study suggests that there is a need to intensify awareness on the health effect of smoking; strengthen and broaden law that bans smoking; and introduce the screening of smoking patients for recurring counselling sessions and intervention at primary healthcare facilities in the country’s urban communities.

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