Could you survive on R26 a day?

The Statistics SA report that outlined adjustments to the national poverty lines on 29 August 2024 presented a challenge: How it would feel to experience the life of a very poor person for a few days and survive on the bare minimum?

A week of poverty would have been enough for this experiment, but the goal was immediately cut to five days because of the ‘hardship’ of sacrificing a relaxing weekend. And I admit to cheating right from the start by drinking coffee. The budget for the five days only allowed for tea.

Coffee has become extremely expensive lately. A jar of proper instant coffee has jumped to close to R150, while even the smallest bag of the cheapest coffee, at R32 for 100g, is unaffordable for somebody living on the extreme poverty line.

Stats SA recalculated the national poverty lines with changes in the cost of goods and services by using price data collected to calculate the consumer price index and the inflation rate.

The national poverty lines were constructed using the cost-of-basic-needs approach, which links welfare to the consumption of goods and services.

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Minimum food for survival

The minimum a person needs to survive in 2024 – the food poverty line or the extreme poverty line – is R796 per person per month.

Stats SA says this amount refers to the amount of money an individual will need to be able to afford the minimum required daily energy intake.

The food poverty line excludes other necessities such as transport, rent, headache tablets, soap and toilet paper.

Two other poverty lines, which include essential non-food items, are also calculated. The lower-bound poverty line is R1 109 per person per month, with the upper-bound poverty line at R1 634.

Stats SA was tasked by government to establish a standard money-metric measurement of poverty for the country in 2007 and the official national poverty lines were published in 2012.

“Poverty lines are important tools that allow for the statistical reporting of poverty levels and patterns, as well as the planning, monitoring and evaluation of poverty reduction programmes and policies,” it says.

“It is important to note that the national poverty lines were not designed to be used for setting the national minimum wage or determining the amount to be paid for social grants. Nevertheless, it can help inform and serve as a data input into some of these processes in ways that could create pro-poor dimensions.”

A survey in 2010 identified a total of 329 different food items that poor households buy.

“Two important conclusions can be drawn from this large number of foods reported. One is that the SA population has diverse food preferences, the second is that the normative per capita per day caloric requirement can be satisfied using a wide range of food baskets which may vary by location and over time,” says Stats SA.

A total of 27 food items were selected as the basis for the food poverty line to meet a nutritional standard of 2 100 calories per person per day. Stats SA concluded that low-income households tend to have smaller food baskets with consumption patterns that are characterised by high consumption levels of “survival foods”, or relatively cheap calories.

Higher-income households purchase costlier calories that may include more protein-rich diets and may also consider other characteristics of food, such as taste, convenience or the brand name.

Stats SA says it is important to note that the food basket does not represent a recommended food plan, but is representative of real food consumption patterns as reported in surveys.

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In practice

Testing the statistics with an (informal) experiment proved the hard reality of living in poverty.

The lower food poverty line of R796 per person per month works out to R26 and a few cents per day (R796/30.5 average days per month).

That is equal to buying R130.50 worth of food for the five days of the test – a shockingly meagre amount of food.

Heading to the store with the statisticians’ list of 27 items food items immediately revealed the first reality: Maize meal will feature prominently in the diet.

A bowl of pap is by far the cheapest source of calories and a bulk food to fill a stomach. A loaf of brown bread seems expensive when shopping with only R130 in your hand.

An apple at R4.99 and a bread roll with a slice of ham are unaffordable luxuries.

Running the experiment for only five days necessitated a pro-rata calculation in a few of the purchases. For instance, a 500g packet of sugar at R21 and 1kg of maize meal at R18 would have to stretch to 10 days to keep within the budget, while a R5 packet of curry powder is enough for several meals.

I bought the cheapest food I would be willing to eat. A packet of chicken (two breasts and a drumstick) at R24 made a curry that yielded three dinners, bulked up with pap.

Bread was on special at R13.99 and provided polony sandwiches for lunch, without margarine. I have to admit that I cheated on the margarine, but it still was a meagre and not very tasty lunch.

Breakfast was pap or more brown bread and polony. Eggs are way too expensive, especially if cash flow constraints force a person to buy only a packet of six at a time rather than a tray of 30. Breakfast on day three was bread and half the tin baked beans. The other half of the beans was for dinner. And I cheated again by grating cheese on top.

The small tin of pilchards in chilli sauce was supposed to be the main ingredient for dinner on day four, but by then I had had enough of living in extreme poverty.

The reality hit hard when I realised I had the option to go out and eat a proper meal – a pizza that cost more than my poor budget of R130 for five days.

This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.