More than 70% earn under P4,000 per month

Mbongeni Mguni | Friday January 18, 2019 15:52

The same report shows that 16.4% percent of all households worry at least ten times a month about not having food.

The Botswana Multi Topic Household Survey’s results were released recently, covering a sample of 24,170 respondents from across all districts, between October 2015 and November 2016. The survey was an update on the 2009/10 Botswana Core Welfare Indicators Survey. Both surveys are designed to assess “a comprehensive set of indicators for poverty and the labour market,” with data produced on household consumption and expenditure, economic activities, education, health and others.

The latest survey paints a desperate picture of most families in the country and the workers who emerge from them every morning to report for duty. According to the report, of the 510,593 wage earners in both in the formal and informal sector, nearly 61,000 were classified as “the working poor”.

“The working poor are the working or employed people who are from households which fall below the poverty            line,” the survey states.

“The wages and their  income are not sufficient to afford basic needs, so as to lift their households above poverty line.

“The wages these people are getting may be above poverty line but not being sufficient to sustain the livelihood of their households.”

The majority of the working poor are females, live in rural areas and work in “elementary occupations,” which involve low skill and manual labour. Other top employment sectors for the working poor are service/sales work, agriculture as well as the crafts and associated trades.

While the highest education of the vast majority of the working poor is primary school, over five percent of the workers in this category attended university or college.

The study also reveals that of the 510,593 wage earners in Botswana, 362,010 earned below P4000. Just over 55% of all wage earners went home with less than P2,000, while 25% earned between P500 and P1,000. On the other end of the scale, just 0.1% of workers earned between P80,000 and P140,000 per month.

“The majority of the households in the two survey periods, considered their income to be less than the absolute minimum,” Statistics Botswana reported.

“In general more than 50% of the households in the survey felt that their current incomes were below the absolute minimum across strata, while in the 2009/10 survey, the only rate above 50% was in the rural areas with the rest below 50%.”

Of all wage earners, those paying tax are also bearing an increasingly heavy tax burden on behalf of all others, as the latest report shows that 64% of all wage-earning workers do not pay tax. Only 25.8% of wage earners are in the informal sector, suggesting that a significant proportion of the formally employed are dodging the taxman and leaving the dumping the load on their compatriots.

The study also shows that more families than ever before worry about going hungry. The finding flies against other data showing that overall poverty rates have improved since the 2009/10 study.

In the latest survey, under self-assessed welfare and food security, 16.4% of households reported worrying about going hungry at least ten times in the space of four weeks, up from 12.7% in the 2009/10 study. Curiously, in the 2009/10 study, more of these households were located in the rural areas, but in the latest survey, households in the cities and towns are increasingly reporting the same challenge.

The latest survey found that inequalities had grown within the incomes earned by different households, with the gap between the rich and the poor widening, particularly in cities and towns.

Despite the inequalities, households generally did not feel worse off than others, when the results are analysed at national level.

“Under the living conditions section of the module, households were asked to compare themselves with households in their community on whether on average, their living conditions were better than the rest of households in the community or not.

“Households in general, when enquired about their living conditions compared to others, revealed that their living conditions were about average compared to others,” the survey found.

Generally, however, disposable incomes rose between 2009/10 and 2015/16 from P5,304.49 to P5,836.37 on average across the country. The amount of expenditure on food declined at national level, which Statistics Botswana researchers said was evidence of greater spending on “luxury” items due to improved incomes.

The latest survey also showed a decline within the two periods in the level of savings by households, set against an increase in loan repayments and other spending on commitments. In the 2015/16 survey, loan repayments make up 27% of household cash outlay, compared to 16% in the 2009/10 survey, while savings make up about 15% down from about 17%.

l Stats Botswana study reveals sorry state of households

l About 56% of workers earn between P1,000 and P2,000

l Over 60,000 workers classified as working poor

l More families worry about going hungry