{"id":260631,"date":"2018-07-29T11:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-07-29T09:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=260631"},"modified":"2018-07-27T14:18:25","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T12:18:25","slug":"the-2-things-crushing-south-africas-well-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/260631\/the-2-things-crushing-south-africas-well-being\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2 things crushing South Africa’s well-being"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG)<\/a><\/strong> looks at how wealth and well-being are linked – and where countries should put their focus when trying to improve both.<\/p>\n

“Promoting the well-being of citizens is widely accepted as the primary goal of national policy and government action\u2014in principle,” BGC said.<\/p>\n

“In practice, however, decision makers face what are generally viewed as competing priorities: improving citizens\u2019 well-being or fostering economic growth.”<\/p>\n

According to the group, it now has data that suggests these two goals are not mutually exclusive, and that there is no need to choose between well-being and growth.<\/p>\n

The latest Sustainable Economic Development Assessment (SEDA)<\/a><\/strong> analysed 152 countries and used data from 2007 through 2016, finding that countries which were better at converting wealth into well-being tended to have faster economic growth.<\/p>\n

They also tended to be more resilient\u2014recovering more quickly from the 2008\u20132009 financial crisis, it said.<\/p>\n

To understand how well-being has changed on an absolute basis, BCG looked at over 40 indicators in 10 main groups, and compiled SEDA scores on a scale of 0 to 100. This shows how countries performed relative to each other.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This was then plotted on a graph showing levels of wealth in every nation, showing how countries with similar income levels can still have different well-being scores.<\/p>\n

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South Africa<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Africa is regarded as one of 36 global power houses, being one of the most populous countries in the world – however, it fares relatively poorly at converting wealth to well-being, rating below economies of a similar size.<\/p>\n

On the overall ranking, South Africa placed 113th, ranking just outside of the lower quartile.<\/p>\n

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Along with most other Sub-Saharan nations, South Africa has limited resources to direct towards areas that bolster well-being, and also struggles to convert the wealth that it does have, the researchers said.<\/p>\n

Looking at a breakdown of the factors that make up the SEDA score, it’s clear that South Africa suffers, generally, but in two areas specifically – employment and income<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

According to BCG, for counties with a relatively low level of well-being – such as South Africa – it is not enough to focus only on areas of development, such as education and health, but economic areas need to be improved as well.<\/p>\n

This includes employment, governance and economic growth – an area where South Africa struggles.<\/p>\n

South Africa has a notoriously and stubbornly high level of unemployment – currently sitting at 27.7% using the narrow definition – a position that is only going to be under further stress in the future, as new technologies and the rules surrounding global competition evolve, BCG said.<\/p>\n

Income, meanwhile, reflects wealth (as measured by GDP per capita) – with South Africa’s low score meaning the country already has a limited pool of money to filter into avenues that would boost well-being.<\/p>\n

According to the report, South Africa’s GDP per capita is currently sitting at $5,480 per person (75th, overall), with a wealth-to-well-being coefficient of 0.85 (with 1.00 being the ‘standard’ level of well-being one would expect from a country’s income levels).<\/p>\n

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Read:\u00a0South Africa\u2019s new investment laws may deter foreigners from putting money into the country<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) looks at how wealth and well-being are linked – and where countries should put their focus when trying to improve both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":260439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[2067,26],"class_list":["post-260631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-boston-consulting-group","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":260649,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260631\/revisions\/260649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}