Leaving the parental home in post‐apartheid South Africa

Abstract

The process by which young people leave home in South Africa is central for understanding the lives of the country's young adult population, as well as, their role in the structural household change that has occurred over the post‐apartheid period. However, hardly any quantitative work has been conducted on this process and no work exists on trends. This study provides nationally representative trends of home‐leaving for young adults in South Africa for the first time using a stacked series of annual cross‐sections between 1995 and 2011. Different home‐leaving rates by race converged in the late 90s and steadied in the 2000s. Most South Africans only left home by age 25—but whether this can be interpreted as ‘delayed’ or not is complicated by diverse family patterns and the presence of stretched households. Home‐leavers are especially dependent on labour market income in the absence of social grants targeted at the large unemployed young adult population. Since young women face higher unemployment rates than young men, women were notably more reliant than men on marriage as a pathway out of the parental home. Over time, young male home‐leavers are living alone at higher rates, meaning they have contributed to general household proliferation.

Challenges facing the Cuban-South African medical collaboration for medical capacity building in KwaZulu-Natal.

“…As a result, there was an abundance of unskilled and semi-skilled labour and a dearth of critical skills, a large portion of which were lost to emigration during the transition to democracy (Fredriksson & Moritz, 2019). According to Thornton (2023), the disparities in the labour market, particularly for women and the Black population, are a reflection of the high levels of poverty and income inequality. Although there have been improvements in access to education, African women in particular still continue to face difficulties in the workplace (Posel & Casale, 2019).…”

“…Nearly thirty years after the advent of democracy, Apartheid's effects on the social, economic, and political climate of the country are still evident. Another consequence of Apartheid was labour migration, both between rural and urban areas as well as out of the country (Thornton, 2023). Increased migration in South Africa was a result of people moving within and outside of the country's borders in search of employment and better opportunities (Fredriksson & Mortiz, 2019).…”