Data from the only national panel study in South Africa
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Facilitating evidence based policy-making
National Income Dynamics Study
Discussion Papers
In the initial planning phases of NIDS, SALDRU commissioned a series of Planning Papers highlighting important socio-economic issues in South Africa. Read more
NIDS in the Media
South Africa can – and should – top up child support grants to avoid a humanitarian crisis. Read an article published in The Conversation. Read more
How does NIDS work?
NIDS is a panel study that has been following the lives of the same 28 000 South Africans and those they live with since 2008. An initiative of the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), the first five iterations of the study were implemented by the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit based at the University of Cape Town's School of Economics between 2008 and 2017. Approximately every two years, highly trained fieldworkers re-interviewed the same people to find out what – if anything – has changed for them since they were last interviewed. In 2020, in light of the global Coronavirus pandemic, a special telephonic follow up survey is being conducted with a subsample of adults from households interviewed by NIDS in 2017. This survey is called the National Income Dynamics Study - Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM).