Friday, November 2, 2012

South Africa Census Results

In my last post, I had mistakenly said that the mine strikes were settled and over. Some of the miners did settle, but there have been other miners continuing to strike. There are many issues and hopefully things will soon be arranged so that the workers can go back to earning a living for themselves and their families.

This week the census results that were gathered last year were released. The previous census was ten years ago. Since then the population has increased about 7 million people to now exceed 51 million. 
About 2.2 million of the people were born outside South Africa. South Africans are moving from the rural areas to the two biggest economic hubs.

Black Africans are 79.2% of the population, coloured and white are each 8.9%, Indian/Asian are 2.5% and other are 0.5%

While the number of dwellings has increased about 3 million since 2001, 13.6% of the people still live in shacks. The number of households with tap water inside the house increased to 46.3%. About 9% of the country still used septic tanks, while 5.2% of households did not have access to any kind of toilet. 75% of the households had a television while only 68% had a refrigerator. Nearly 90% had cellphones.

Though employment had increased from 9.5 million in 2001 to 13.4 million in 2011, about 14 million people aged between 15 and 65 were still economically inactive and 5.6 mission classified as unemployed. The unemployment rate has just exceeded 25 %. Black households earned an average of about $5,000 a year while white households earn about $45,500 a year. Coloured and Indian households earn on average $14,000 and $31,000 respectively. Women in women-headed households earn about 1/2 of their male counterparts.

The number of South African children who have lost one or both parents has increased in the past 10 years. More than 3.3 million children up to the age of 17 years have lost one or both parents. The loss of fathers is more than double the loss of mothers. The percentage of double-parent orphans has more than doubled between 2001 and 2011. The number of households headed by children between the ages of five and 19 has been halved from  246,000 in 2001 to 150,000 in 2011.

This information was gathered from two daily newspapers and the TV news.

Cecilia