In the past two decades, SA reduced, but never fully tamed, child hunger. Between 2002 and 2018 the proportion of households that said there had been child hunger in their household at least once the previous year dropped from 35% to 16%. Stunting, wasting and underweight in children also declined.

Expansion of the reach and age-eligibility of the child support grant played a major role in the halving of child hunger between 2002 and 2007. During the 2007/2008 global financial crisis it rose steeply, and then, over a decade of slow economic growth, it only gradually declined to its 2007 level...

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