“The South African dream,” reported Times Live, “is more about buying a car than owning a house”. South Africans spend less on education than on clothing, the report says, offered a few numbers to back up the headline claims. One of them is: “Households with an income of less than R3,500 a month are spending 8% of it on clothing andfootwear – more than on education and health combined.”
To back up these claims, Times Live used an analysis based on data from Stats SA’s Income and Expenditure of Households 2010/2011 survey plus some company results. But Africa’s media facts watchdog Africa Check says everything is not what it seems. They say the data does not back up the claims that SA has fallen into a culture of “bling” spending.
They say by choosing to base calculations of household health spending on the Stats SA figure for “health expenditure” when this specifically excluded spending on medical aid contributions and medical insurance, this report is not comparing apples with apples.
And on schooling, Stats SA actually found South African households devoted more of their spending to education than households in the United States, the UK, Canada and other countries in Africa. Seems like important data was ignored to create the bling spending image of SA, but read Africa Check’s full analyses here: CLICK HERE
