Government

How much you need to make to be officially classified as poor in South Africa in 2026

Malcolm Libera

 ·26 Aug 2026

South Africans living on less than R2,962 per person per month are officially below the upper-bound poverty line in 2026.

This is according to the latest National Poverty Lines 2026, published by Statistics South Africa on 26 August, which measures poverty using three inflation-adjusted thresholds linked to May 2026 prices.

 Stats SA’s highest poverty threshold, known as the Upper-Bound Poverty Line (UBPL), has been set at R2,962 per person per month.

This means that a person earning or spending below this amount is considered to be living below the upper-bound poverty line.

Stats SA defines the UBPL as “the food poverty line plus the average amount derived from non-food items of households whose food expenditure is equal (or near) to the food poverty line.”

The middle threshold is the Lower-Bound Poverty Line (LBPL), which stands at R1,457 per person per month in 2026.

Stats SA describes this as “the food poverty line plus the average amount derived from non-food items of households whose total expenditure is equal (or near) to the food poverty line.”

At the bottom of the scale is the Food Poverty Line (FPL), which has increased to R868 per person per month.

Stats SA defines this as the “amount of money that an individual will need to afford the minimum required daily energy intake”, and says it is “also commonly referred to as the ‘extreme’ poverty line.”

The poverty lines are calculated using Stats SA’s Cost of Basic Needs approach, which “links welfare to the consumption of goods and services”.

The methodology considers both food and essential non-food requirements. For the food component, Stats SA developed a reference basket using information from the 2022/23 Income and Expenditure Survey.

Households in expenditure deciles 2 to 6 were used as the reference group, avoiding both the extreme deprivation of the poorest households and the higher spending of wealthier households.

Food items were included if they “accounted for at least 0.5% of total food consumption expenditure” and were consumed by at least 10% of households.

The resulting basket contained 46 food items, representing roughly 90% of food consumption among the reference population.

The cost of meeting basic needs has increased substantially

Stats SA uses a baseline requirement of 2,100 kilocalories per person per day, which it says is recommended to meet the energy needs of an average adult doing light physical activity.

The original food basket provided only 1,211 kilocalories per day at a monthly cost of R457 in May 2023 prices. Therefore, Stats SA adjusted the cost upwards to reach the required energy intake.

“By scaling the expenditure in accordance with the required energy intake, the cost necessary to achieve nutritional adequacy was derived,” the agency said.

This produced a Food Poverty Line of R777 per person per month in May 2023 prices.

Stats SA then added essential non-food costs, including shelter, clothing, transport, healthcare and education. The methodology produced an LBPL of R1,300 and a UBPL of R2,635 in May 2023.

These thresholds are updated annually to account for changes in the cost of living. Stats SA adjusts the food component using food inflation and the non-food component using inflation for non-food items.

“The food portion of the NPLs is adjusted using the CPI for food items,” Stats SA said, while the non-food portion is adjusted using “a CPI of non-food items.”

The agency said the primary purpose of the poverty lines is to provide a tool for the statistical measurement of money-metric poverty.

They are intended to provide a consistent benchmark for tracking poverty and to improve the targeting of developmental policies and programmes.

However, Stats SA cautioned that the figures should not be used to determine the national minimum wage, social grant amounts or eligibility thresholds, or to determine the equitable share allocated to provinces.

The latest report also noted that the cost of meeting basic needs has increased substantially over the past two decades due to inflation and periodic updates to the underlying household expenditure data.

The full report can be viewed below.