This paper seeks to investigate how the demography of households relates to individual
labour market outcomes. We comprehensively examine household size and structures
in the October Household Surveys 1995, 1997, 1999 and the Labour Force Surveys
September 2001 and 2002. Over the 1995-2002 period, the number of households
has increased in the face of rising unemployment and the average household size has
decreased signifi cantly. A rising proportion of single households mostly drives this result.
We further investigate how such changes in the patterns of household composition
could be correlated to changes in labour force participation rates, unemployment
rates, and employment rates. We fi nd that employment rates in smaller households
are substantially higher und unemployment rates lower than in larger households with
more than two adult members. The shares of workless households where no member
is employed, and fully employed households, where all working age adult members
earn income from work, tell about employment polarisation. In particular, the share of
households with unemployed members has doubled to 27 per cent in 2002, and the
share of workless households, in which no member is employed, has risen to a third
of all South African households. The results highlight some of the wider welfare
effects of job losses and other economic variables on households in South Africa.
