2. Review of Literature
3.4 Poverty and household expenditure analysis
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3.3.1.4 Strategies used to administer cash transfers in Zimbabwe
In Zimbabwe, as a way of mitigating poverty in households, the Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare introduced unconditional cash transfer in 2011 called the Harmonized Social Cash Transfer (HSCT) (UNICEF, 2020). The cash transfer was targeted to feed the poor and labour-constrained households allowing the beneficiaries to live above the poverty line through giving them a direct income to reduce the number of problems that these households and communities where facing (Nyathi & Thobejane 2018T). Poverty and extreme poverty in Zimbabwe is not limited to unemployed people, since most people work in agricultural activities that yield low and volatile incomes (Rubhara et. al., 2020; GoZ, 2016).
Over 2 million people in rural areas which is 22 percent of the rural population are food insecure especially in female-headed households and child labour was becoming more predominant from 28.9 percent to 23 percent (GoZ, 2016). Hence, the cash transfer’s main objective was to help beneficiaries by reducing child labour, early marriages, improving nutritional status, health and educational outcomes especially in female-headed households (Luisa & Fidelia, 2019).The purpose of the harmonized Social Cash Transfer (HSCT )’s purpose was to operate in harmony with its predecessor the Social Welfare and Its mandate was to combine the case management and referral support by social workers at the local level and incorporate registries from various initiatives responsible for identifying vulnerabilities (Thome et. al., 2016; Bhalla et. al., 2016). Therefore, allowing for an automatic identification of eligible beneficiaries to service providers such as government or NGOs (Thome et. al., 2016;
Bhalla et. al., 2016).
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Poverty, cannot be defined as a singular component as it encompasses a lot factors such as personal experience, social experiences and economic issues (MEPIP & UNDP, 2015; Touray, 2016). Different circumstances can bring about an unexpected shock on one’s standards of living leading to community members in a situation where they are unable to afford their normal basic needs. The World Bank (2017:6) defines poverty as following:
“Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways. Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape. So poverty is a call to action -- for the poor and the wealthy alike -- a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities.”
The working definition of poverty for this study is people not being able to afford basic needs;
such as not being able to put food on the table, providing shelter for their families and a lack of land and funding to support their farming livelihood activities. Poverty in this research was measured using the household expenditure analysis as it is good at analysing people’s spending habits and the impact of the cash transfer in reducing household poverty (Rubhara et. al., 2020;
Seth & Villar, 2017). According to Touray (2016) the household expenditure analysis uses demographic and social factors to help in explaining why certain households fall into poverty.
The demographic and social factors are age, sex, educational level and number of people living in a household. Therefore, the study using the household expenditure analysis helped in evaluating poverty traits in the female-headed households. The household expenditure analysis runs on the premise of evaluating the consumption and wellbeing of a country's population (Rubhara et. al., 2020; FAO, 2017). Glazebrooke et al. (2020) also notes that household expenditure analysis also helps a researcher to see what female farmers decide to produce and purchase against their income. Purchases also help in detecting whether the cash transfer is helping in reducing the harsh effects of poverty. People are rational beings who do not just consume anything but cost and availability of funds limit most of the decisions made and done in households (Seth &Villar, 2017).
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Furthermore, the household expenditure analysis uses food, education, health, agricultural inputs and durable goods as indexes to denote poverty (Mignouna et. al., 2015). World Food Plan (WFP) (2015) notes that rural female subsistence farmers normally do not have good health due to the heavy manual labour they do and poor food nutrition. Heavy manual labour is not healthy as it wears out women and at the end of the day the work for women becomes long and cumbersome making them have poor health (Glazebrook, 2020). Rural areas are not furnished with social amenities such as tarred roads like the city making transport expensive making life difficult for the rural people as they often do not have much to meet their daily basic needs (Touray, 2016; Rubhara et. al., 2020).
Social services such as good health care system, tap water, electricity and good schools come with a hefty price as they are next to non-existent as government and the private companies do not invest in these areas (Touray, 2016). With a lack of good social amenities, the lives of poor rural households revolve around a continuous struggle for food and a continuous threat of seasonal food shortages or price increase as most rural areas are inaccessible (Tekwa &
Adenisa, 2018; ZimVac, 2017; Touray, 2016). Rural people do not have much so most of their funds is spent on food sourcing, health and education is not their priority. As a result, in order to increase food production and recompense the high cost of prices of rural area services farm land owners use women and young children especially girls as cheap labours in farms (ZimVac, 2017; Touray, 2016). Glazebrooket. et. al. (2020). Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) (2017) recommend that the only way to reduce poverty in female farming activities is to empower them educationally, technologically (modern farm inputs and tools) and financially.
In addition, Jaka & Shava (2018) and Glazebrook et. al. (2020) state that many scholars and authors of development in sub-Saharan Africa concur with the notion, that women be it in the global South or North face more challenges as compared to their male counterparts especially in agriculture. Along these lines, governments and non-governmental organisations have started formulating strategies, policies and laws that can help advance women on their road to empowerment (ZMDGR, 2016; Jaka & Shava, 2018; Christensen, 2019). These policies are aimed at reducing household hunger, gender disparities and increasing women’s economic productivity especially in rural farming communities (FAO, 2015; AIR, 2013; Touray, 2016;
Jaka & Shava, 2018).
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For that reason, financing rural women’s livelihoods especially in drought prone regions should be a top priority to help reduce feminisation of poverty (FAO, 2015; Shava, 2018). However, in Zimbabwe non-governmental organisations have taken most of the responsibilities of rural poverty alleviation as government has failed to fund welfare projects due to the prevailing economic meltdown of the country (Rukasha, Nyagadza; Pashapa & Muposhi, 2021; Jaka &
Shava, 2018). Although non-governmental organisations have taken up the welfare responsibility, government has put restrictions to their funding causing most of these projects to shut down or run without proper funding (Jaka & Shava, 2018). The government’s main fear is that some external funders’ main interest is to create anti-government sentiments. Jaka &
Shava (2018) did a case study of Chivi rural district where a lot of non-governmental organisations had to close due to changing priorities in the donor countries and other harsh government measures that discouraged fundraising. In the end rural women’s livelihood normally suffer as there is not any financial indemnification for such empowerment programs (Jaka & Shava, 2018).