| The aim of this thesis was to study the effect of social capital on rural poverty and technical efficiency in the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study has provided useful insights about social capital and development. It also has important policy implications for public authorities and other development practitioners and highlights some important gaps in the research which will need to be addressed to better understand how and why social capital works.; Descriptive statistics of the socio-economic conditions in 1993 and 1998 are presented. This description was based partly on gender, residency of household head and cattle ownership. I constructed several alternative social capital indicators that I subsequently used in poverty and technical efficiency analyses. I performed ordinary least squares regression (OLS) and a logit analysis to study the effect of social capital, health and other variables on per capita food expenditure and households' income transition between 1993 and 1998 respectively. I generated household and average technical efficiency measures from a stochastic frontier function that I estimated using cross-sectional data and the maximum likelihood procedure and then examined effects of social capital.; The evidence suggests that social capital is an important variable that should not be omitted in analyses of development. Groups, household networks and civic engagement are important forms of social capital. Results of the descriptive analysis indicate that female-headed households, households with absent heads and non-cattle owners were on average poorer than male-headed households, households with resident heads and cattle owners. Apart from these households, policy also needs to target those that are poor of networks as household networks have been shown to be important for development. Maize producers were on average 22 percent technically inefficient in maize production. A priority for policy makers is to provide the necessary infrastructure to stimulate small-holder agriculture.; Although, many studies have documented that social capital works, how and why it works will greatly contribute to understanding how and when it can be used to influence development. This work will require collaborative efforts between economists, sociologists and/or anthropologists. |
