Professor Nicole De Wet-Billings

African Fellow
Prof. Nicole De Wet-Billings

Professor Nicole De Wet-Billings

African Fellow, February - April 2023

Home Institution: University of the Witwatersrand

Nicole De Wet-Billings, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Demography and Population Studies department and Assistant Dean for Research in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is a Female Academic Leadership Fellow (FALF) and has a Y-rating from the South African National Research Foundation (NRF). Professor De Wet-Billings’ research interest is in the challenges that compromise transitions to adulthood among adolescents and youth in South Africa. She has over 65 journal publications and has successfully supervised more than 30 Master of Arts (MA) and two doctoral students. She was the South African Department of Science and Technology (DST) Women in Science 2016 first runner up in the Young Distinguished Women in Humanities and Social Sciences category. Then in 2018, De Wet-Billings was named one of the Mail and Guardians Top 200 Young (under 35 years old) South Africans within the education category. She has held research grants from the DSI-NRF Center of Excellence in Human Development, the South African National Research Foundation (NRF), British Academy, the Mellon Mays Foundation and the Center for Advanced Research and Training in Africa (CARTA). Professor De Wet-Billings is passionate about teaching and professional skills dissemination. In her department, she is course coordinator and lecturer for the MA in Health Demography and in the past has held numerous workshops on writing journal articles, responding to examiners and reviewers and conferencing skills for postgraduate students in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand. As the Assistant Dean for Research in this faculty, she provides visionary leadership for research, empowering academic staff and post-doctoral staff to develop research, as well as facilitating partnerships with both the public and private sectors while working collaboratively with the institution’s leadership and external funding institutions.

Project title: Perpetuation of household food insecurity during COVID-19 in South Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened levels of poverty and inequality [1, 2]. Across the world, massive amounts of deaths, job losses and disruptions to education have led to economic, social and healthcare pressures. No country has been exempt, and the world is yet to fully understand the long- term consequences of the virus. However, prior to the pandemic, economies and populations in the global south were battling poverty and inequality. Among the more specific challenges is food insecurity.

Prior to the pandemic, approximately 20% of South African households reported not having enough food to eat in the last seven days [3]. This percentage increased to over 25% during the early months of the pandemic [4]. The ‘hard lockdown’ in the country which saw an almost complete standstill to all social and economic activities, with the exception of essential services (mostly in the healthcare sector) lasted for approximately four months, and because many businesses closed or suffered due to lack of activity, about 22% of adult females and 10% of adult males living in South Africa lost their jobs [5]. To buffer this, the government increased the value of some social grants and introduced a new grant to households whose members were unemployed or lost employment due to the restrictions. The value of the new ‘social relief of distress grant’ was not much at USD 23 (ZAR 350) and with the current mean number of household members at five per household, it is clear to see why gross food insecurity numbers increased in the country [6, 7].

The aim of this research therefore is to identify and analyse the social and economic determinants of food insecurity affecting children and households during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. Specifically, the study will assess the impact of grants and other social determinants on household food insecurity from May 2020 to May 2021 in South Africa, and will determine the impact of food insecurity on early childhood development during the same period.

This study is a longitudinal analysis of Wave 1 and Wave 5 of the NIDS Cram data. The NIDS Cram data are nationally representative and contains data on the household, economic, education and health circumstances of individuals from May 2020 to May 2021 in South Africa. This study includes all households that participated in the NIDS CRAM survey from 2020 to 2021. In Wave 1 (May 2020), a sample of 7,030 respondents took part in the survey. Of these 26.84% reported at least one household member not having enough food to eat in the seven days prior to the survey. These respondents were followed up to Wave 5 (May 2021) where almost 21% reported still having at least one household member no having enough food to eat.  Further, in Wave 5, 75.74% of children were meant to receive a meal at an Early Childhood Development Centre (ECDC) and 62.09% had not been attending due to the pandemic and therefore did not receive a meal. Both descriptive and inferential statistics suitable for longitudinal data are being used to create a profile of food insecurity and analyse who, by various controls, are the most affected in the population over the study period.

References:

1.         Lone, S.A. and A. Ahmad, COVID-19 pandemic–an African perspective. Emerging microbes & infections, 2020. 9(1): p. 1300-1308.

2.         Maital, S. and E. Barzani, The global economic impact of COVID-19: A summary of research. Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research, 2020. 2020: p. 1-12.

3.         Statistics SA, Mid-Year Population Estimates 2021, in Pretoria, S.S. Africa, Editor. 2021: Statistics South Africa

4.         Ranchhod, V. and R.C. Daniels, Labour market dynamics in South Africa in the time of COVID-19: Evidence from wave 1 of the NIDS-CRAM survey. 2020.

5.         Casale, D. and D. Posel, Gender and the early effects of the COVID-19 crisis in the paid and unpaid economies in South Africa. NIDS-CRAM Policy Paper. Recuperado el, 2020. 18.

6.         Skinner, C., et al., Informal Work in South Africa and COVID-19: Gendered Impacts and Priority Interventions. WIEGO Policy Brief, 2021(22).

7.         Lehohla, P., Census 2011: population dynamics in South Africa. Statistics South Africa, 2015: p. 1-112.