The dynamics of poverty in the first three waves of NIDS

We use the first three waves of data from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) to analyse poverty dynamics in South Africa between 2008 and 2012. Restricting ourselves to the sub-sample of balanced panel respondents, we find that poverty exit rates increased with time, though a substantial proportion of the population was trapped in severe poverty, defined as having income of less than half of the poverty line. The importance of demographic events in the household as drivers of poverty transitions are highlighted in a univariate and multivariate setting. Finally we look at the joint distributions of multidimensional poverty and income poverty in order to ascertain the extent to which they complement or offset one another.