There is absolutely no evidence that young women are deliberately falling pregnant in order to access the child support grant, Statistician-General Pali Lehohla said on Monday as he released the findings of the South Africa Demographic and Health Survey (SADHS) 2016. The study found that the teenage pregnancy rate had remained virtually the same between 1998 and 2016 at 71 per 1,000 women. "There is a notion that grants influence young girls to produce children, but the evidence before us is that isn’t true. The data dispenses with that myth," said Lehohla. The child support grant was introduced in 1998, and currently stands at R380 a month. Children are the primary beneficiaries of the government’s welfare grant system, and are expected to amount to 12.82-million of the 18.06-million beneficiaries by the 2019-20 fiscal year. Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the survey’s findings on teenage pregnancy added to research commissioned by former social development minister Zola Skwe...
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