Young People's Social Networks, Confidants and Issues of Reproductive Health

This qualitative micro study was conducted in the Metropole of Cape Town, the third largest metropole in South Africa during 2002. The study must be seen in relation to the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS) that was conducted in June 2002. CAPS is planned as a longitudinal data collection project aimed at the youth in the Cape Metropole. The panel study broadly aims to supplement existing data sets like the Census, October Household Survey [OHS], Labour Force Survey [LFS] in particular with longitudinal and qualitative data addressing areas not necessarily done by national surveys. It anticipates uncovering determinants of schooling, unemployment and earnings of young adults and youth in this part of the country. Adolescent childbearing is common in South Africa as demonstrated by the 1998 South Africa Demographic and Health Survey, where by the age of 19 years, 30 percent of teenage females have had a child, 35 percent have been pregnant and the majority of teenage childbearing is outside of marriage. [Department of Health 1999] Given the high prevalence of pregnancy and unmarried childbearing among adolescent females, it becomes important to understand the degree to which young people themselves understand how pregnancy and childbearing in adolescence delay or disrupt other life course events such as school completion or entering into marriage or cohabitation. Drawing on focus group discussion data from teenagers in Cape Town on normatively appropriate sequences, we note the degree to which the actual ways teenage males and females move through adolescence depart from the normative sequences.

The Links Between Migration, Poverty and Health: Evidence From Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plain

In the mid-1950s, the City of Cape Town was part of a wider area demarcated as a Coloured Labour Preference Area. The free movement of African people into the city was strictly controlled and the residential areas were segregated along racial lines. In terms of Apartheid's grand design, an area designated Mitchell's Plain was demarcated for occupation by Coloured people in 1973 while another designated Khayelitsha was allocated for African people. The two areas were incorporated in one magisterial district, Mitchell's Plain, in the mid-1980s. A sample survey of the area was conducted in late November and early December 2000 with a focus on labour market issues. Its aim was to capture occupants of households aged 18 or older. The survey data has been interrogated to describe the connections between migration, poverty and health in a city where recent rapid urbanisation is changing the demographic profile significantly. As a consequence, the need to provide adequate infrastructure, decent housing and employment poses a daunting challenge ten years after the new democracy has been ushered in.

Young People's Social Networks, Confidants and Issues of Reproductive Health

This qualitative micro study was conducted in the Metropole of Cape Town, the third largest metropole in South Africa during 2002. The study must be seen in relation to the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS) that was conducted in June 2002. CAPS is planned as a longitudinal data collection project aimed at the youth in the Cape Metropole. The panel study broadly aims to supplement existing data sets like the Census, October Household Survey [OHS], Labour Force Survey [LFS] in particular with longitudinal and qualitative data addressing areas not necessarily done by national surveys. It anticipates uncovering determinants of schooling, unemployment and earnings of young adults and youth in this part of the country. Adolescent childbearing is common in South Africa as demonstrated by the 1998 South Africa Demographic and Health Survey, where by the age of 19 years, 30 percent of teenage females have had a child, 35 percent have been pregnant and the majority of teenage childbearing is outside of marriage. [Department of Health 1999] Given the high prevalence of pregnancy and unmarried childbearing among adolescent females, it becomes important to understand the degree to which young people themselves understand how pregnancy and childbearing in adolescence delay or disrupt other life course events such as school completion or entering into marriage or cohabitation. Drawing on focus group discussion data from teenagers in Cape Town on normatively appropriate sequences, we note the degree to which the actual ways teenage males and females move through adolescence depart from the normative sequences.This research was supported by a grant from the Mellon Programme on Demography at the University of Cape Town. We thank the Andrew W Mellon Foundation for its support. Permission for this work was granted by the Western Cape Education Department. The authors would also like to thank the young men and women from Hout Bay, Khayelitsha, Mitchell’s Plain and Wynberg, who agreed to participate in the frank discussions that made this study possible. We also want to thank all the teachers [5 teachers from High Schools, a Church Minister and a lay minister] who made the focus group sessions possible

Young people's social networks, confidants and issues of reproductive health

This qualitative micro study was conducted in the Metropole of Cape Town, the third largest metropole in South Africa during 2002. The study must be seen in relation to the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS) that was conducted in June 2002. CAPS is planned as a longitudinal data collection project aimed at the youth in the Cape Metropole. The panel study broadly aims to supplement existing data sets like the Census, October Household Survey [OHS], Labour Force Survey [LFS] in particular with longitudinal and qualitative data addressing areas not necessarily done by national surveys. It anticipates uncovering determinants of schooling, unemployment and earnings of young adults and youth in this part of the country. 'Adolescent childbearing is common in South Africa as demonstrated by the 1998 South Africa Demographic and Health Survey, where by the age of 19 years, 30 percent of teenage females have had a child, 35 percent have been pregnant and the majority of teenage childbearing is outside of marriage.' [Department of Health 1999] Given the high prevalence of pregnancy and unmarried childbearing among adolescent females, it becomes important to understand the degree to which young people themselves understand how pregnancy and childbearing in adolescence delay or disrupt other life course events such as school completion or entering into marriage or cohabitation. Drawing on focus group discussion data from teenagers in Cape Town on normatively appropriate sequences, we note the degree to which the actual ways teenage males and females move through adolescence depart from the normative sequences

The Links Between Migration, Poverty and Health: Evidence From Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plain

In the mid-1950s, the City of Cape Town was part of a wider area demarcated as a Coloured Labour Preference Area. The free movement of African people into the city was strictly controlled and the residential areas were segregated along racial lines. In terms of Apartheid's grand design, an area designated Mitchell's Plain was demarcated for occupation by Coloured people in 1973 while another designated Khayelitsha was allocated for African people. The two areas were incorporated in one magisterial district, Mitchell's Plain, in the mid-1980s. A sample survey of the area was conducted in late November and early December 2000 with a focus on labour market issues. Its aim was to capture occupants of households aged 18 or older. The survey data has been interrogated to describe the connections between migration, poverty and health in a city where recent rapid urbanisation is changing the demographic profile significantly. As a consequence, the need to provide adequate infrastructure, decent housing and employment poses a daunting challenge ten years after the new democracy has been ushered in.We are deeply indebted to Matthew Welch, deputy-director of the Data First Resource Unit, for so diligently creating the database from the Khayelitsha/Mitchell’s Plain Survey as well as assisting with coding and recoding of certain responses and providing seemingly endless tabulations to enable us to verify the coding which occurred. We acknowledge too the sterling efforts of Jolene Skordis in cutting the initial tables and validating the database as well as Virgulino Nhate who successfully completed his Honours degree in Economics at the University of Cape Town in 2003 and upon whose honours thesis we have drawn extensively although we have used a later version of the database and some alternative questions for analysis. We are very grateful to Alison Siljeur for providing the maps and to Brenda Adams for formatting this paper. Our thanks are also due to Lynn Woolfrey for bibliographical assistance. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided most generously the funds which enabled us to carry out this endeavour. The usual caveats apply

The Links Between Migration, Poverty and Health: Evidence From Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plain

In the mid-1950s, the City of Cape Town was part of a wider area demarcated as a Coloured Labour Preference Area. The free movement of African people into the city was strictly controlled and the residential areas were segregated along racial lines. In terms of Apartheid's grand design, an area designated Mitchell's Plain was demarcated for occupation by Coloured people in 1973 while another designated Khayelitsha was allocated for African people. The two areas were incorporated in one magisterial district, Mitchell's Plain, in the mid-1980s. A sample survey of the area was conducted in late November and early December 2000 with a focus on labour market issues. Its aim was to capture occupants of households aged 18 or older. The survey data has been interrogated to describe the connections between migration, poverty and health in a city where recent rapid urbanisation is changing the demographic profile significantly. As a consequence, the need to provide adequate infrastructure, decent housing and employment poses a daunting challenge ten years after the new democracy has been ushered in.We are deeply indebted to Matthew Welch, deputy-director of the Data First Resource Unit, for so diligently creating the database from the Khayelitsha/Mitchell’s Plain Survey as well as assisting with coding and recoding of certain responses and providing seemingly endless tabulations to enable us to verify the coding which occurred. We acknowledge too the sterling efforts of Jolene Skordis in cutting the initial tables and validating the database as well as Virgulino Nhate who successfully completed his Honours degree in Economics at the University of Cape Town in 2003 and upon whose honours thesis we have drawn extensively although we have used a later version of the database and some alternative questions for analysis. We are very grateful to Alison Siljeur for providing the maps and to Brenda Adams for formatting this paper. Our thanks are also due to Lynn Woolfrey for bibliographical assistance. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided most generously the funds which enabled us to carry out this endeavour. The usual caveats apply

The Links between Migration, Poverty and Health: Evidence from Khayelitsha and Mitchell’s Plain

health, housing, labour markets, migration, poverty, urbanization,