Abstract

In April 1998, the post-apartheid South African government introduced a monthly cash transfer for children in poor households. A requirement for getting the grant was that the birth of the child had to be registered, and the adult primary caregiver had to have the citizen identity document. The success of the system of support was contingent on the new democratic government's ability to integrate into one national welfare system what had been fragmented under apartheid into many racially separated systems; it also, ironically, built on the apartheid-era state pension delivery system. Within a decade the grant reached more than ten million children, and was associated with a rapid increase in birth registrations, marking the poorest children's first step into citizenship, and opening up the possibility of later access to other programmes and entitlements.