Housing insecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic: An application of the Households Housing Insecurity Index (HHII)

The understanding of housing insecurity in the context of poverty reduction remains an important area, especially in the conceptualisation emanating from the animal with multiple head metaphor. Poverty is argued to be viewed as an animal with multiple heads in its multidimensional conceptualisation. We contend that a misdiagnosis in the Multidimensional poverty index (MPI) recognises housing insecurity as a leg of living standards (the other two in the MPI are education and health). The argument that housing should be considered as a dimension or a head, according to the Household Housing Insecurity Index (HHII), emanates from the basic needs understanding, where housing stands among food and health, even higher than education. This paper first presents the Household Housing Insecurity Index (HHII) in the context of multidimensional poverty. Then it uses components of the HHII with available data from Statistics South Africa's general household survey to analyse the housing insecurity profile of households in South Africa collected during the covid-19 pandemic. This helps to paint an initial picture of the impact of the pandemic. Initial because there are still lagged effects unfolding beyond the immediate short-run implications. The Regression analysis results show that total household income, the material used for the construction of the house, crowding, gender and population group are significant predictors of household housing insecurity. Key Words:Household Housing Insecurity (HHII), Poverty, Covid-19, Multidimensional poverty Index (MPI)