South Africa: 2024 Household Survey Findings

General Household Survey P0318 Embargoed until: 27 May 2025 11:30

This document provides an overview of the General Household Survey (GHS) for 2024 conducted by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), detailing various aspects of household characteristics and living conditions across the country's provinces. It covers key areas such as population and household size estimates, household composition, educational attendance and attainment, health status and medical aid coverage, social security benefits, housing conditions, access to basic services like water, sanitation, and energy, as well as environmental problems, communication methods, transport, income sources, household assets, food access, and agricultural activities. The report also includes technical notes on the survey methodology, sampling, weighting, and comparability with previous years, offering a comprehensive statistical snapshot of South African households.

Based on the information from the General Household Survey (GHS) 2024 sources provided, several factors impact South African households, including economic conditions, access to social security, and environmental concerns. The GHS is an annual household-based survey that measures the progress of development and identifies persistent service delivery gaps across various themes, such as education, health, social development, housing, access to services and facilities, food security, and agriculture. The 2024 survey was conducted between January and December 2024.

Here's an overview of how these factors impact households:

Economic Factors

Economic conditions significantly influence households, primarily through their sources of income, expenditure, and asset ownership.

• Income Sources: Nationally, the most common sources of household income in 2024 were salaries/wages/commission (62.2%) and grants (50.9%). Income from a business was reported by 3,038 thousand households nationally. Salaries were most prevalent in Western Cape (74.7%) and Gauteng (69.9%), while grants were more common than salaries in Eastern Cape (65.6% vs 49.0%), Free State (64.2% vs 54.6%), Limpopo (62.9% vs 50.4%), Northern Cape (64.0% vs 60.5%), and Mpumalanga (59.1% vs 56.8%). Remittances also played a significant role as a source of income, particularly in Eastern Cape (18.3%), Mpumalanga (17.4%), and Limpopo (16.5%).
• Main Income Source: Salaries/wages/commission were the main source of income for 54.5% of households nationally. However, social grants were the main source for 23.8% of households nationally. This varied provincially, with social grants being the main source for 38.9% of households in Eastern Cape, 34.4% in Northern Cape, and 33.8% in Limpopo. In metropolitan areas, salaries and wages were the main source for 63.9% of households, while social grants were the main source for 15.1%. The percentage of households relying mainly on salaries and wages saw a notable decline from 54.8% in 2019 to 50.8% in 2020, rebounding slightly to 54.5% in 2024, coinciding with the introduction of the COVID-19 SRD grant.
• Household Assets: Asset ownership provides status and security and influences a household's ability to diversify livelihoods. Asset poverty is considered more persistent and prevalent than income poverty. Common assets owned by households in 2024 included electric stoves (88.3%), refrigerators (80.9%), and televisions (77.5%). Ownership of these items was more common in metropolitan and urban areas compared to rural areas, although still quite common in rural areas. Pay-tv decoders were owned by 58.6% of households nationally, with relatively similar ownership percentages across rural (56.3%), urban (59.6%), and metro (57.2%) areas. Assets like gas stoves, vehicles, geysers, and computers were significantly more common in metro and urban areas than rural areas. Rural households were more likely to own rainwater tanks (25.6% vs 10.9%) and boreholes (7.7% vs 3.8%) compared to households in general.

Social Security

Social grants serve as a vital safety net for many South African households, particularly in the poorest provinces.

• Beneficiary Growth: The percentage of individuals benefiting from a social grant increased significantly from 12.8% in 2003 to 40.1% in 2024. The introduction of the Special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant contributed to a sharp rise in beneficiaries, with the percentage of individuals aged 18–59 receiving this grant increasing from 5.3% in 2020 to 13.9% in 2024.
• Household Coverage: Similarly, the percentage of households receiving at least one social grant increased from 30.8% in 2003 to 50.4% in 2024, reaching a peak of 52.4% in 2020.
• Provincial Distribution: Grant beneficiaries were most common in Eastern Cape (54.2%) and Limpopo (51.5%), and least common in Western Cape (25.0%) and Gauteng (26.9%). Households receiving grants were most prevalent in Eastern Cape (64.7%), Northern Cape (63.7%), and Free State (63.5%), and least common in Gauteng (36.5%) and Western Cape (38.3%).

Environmental Concerns

Environmental problems in communities and issues related to waste disposal also impact households.

• Common Problems: In 2024, the most concerning environmental problems reported by households were waste removal problems and littering (40.5%) and land degradation and soil erosion (36.8%). The proportion of households concerned about littering and waste removal has notably increased since 2009 (when it was 32.4%). Air pollution was considered a problem by 17.7% of households in 2024, a decrease from 22.7% in 2003, potentially linked to changes in energy sources used for cooking.
• Metropolitan Areas: In metropolitan areas, waste removal problems and littering (36.4%) and land degradation (27.3%) were also the most common issues. Mangaung and Buffalo City reported land degradation as the most significant problem, while waste removal and littering were most important in other metros.
• Refuse Removal: Household waste disposal methods vary significantly. Nationally, 61.3% of households had refuse removed at least once per week (or less often at 2.3%), while 34.3% used communal or household refuse dumps. There are large discrepancies between urban and rural areas: close to two-thirds (63.6%) of households nationally had refuse removed weekly or less often, but this was much lower in rural areas (13.5%) compared to urban (85.3%) and metro areas (85.1%). About 77.4% of households in rural areas discarded refuse themselves, compared to only 6.8% in urban areas.
• Burning Refuse: Burning household waste is a relatively common practice, with 85.5% of households nationally burning refuse from time to time. This practice was less common in Western Cape (61.7% never burned) and Gauteng (38.0% never burned) but more common in KwaZulu-Natal (92.7% burned from time to time), North West (92.6%), and Eastern Cape (91.9%). The source notes this practice poses significant health and environmental risks.

For further insights download the report.