In 2008, the South African Presidency embarked on an intensive effort to track changes in the well-being of South Africans by closely following about 28 000 people young and old, rich and poor over a period of years. This was undertaken through initiating the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS). The NIDS survey is the first national panel study to document the dynamic structure of a sample of household members in South Africa and changes in their incomes, expenditures, assets, access to services, education, health, and other dimensions of well-being. A key feature of the panel study is its ability to follow people as they move out of their original 7 305 households. In doing this, the movement of household members as they leave and/or return to the household or set up their own households will be adequately captured in subsequent waves of this panel study. The first “baseline” wave of NIDS was conducted by the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) based at the University of Cape Town's School of Economics. The first wave of fieldwork commenced in February 2008, and data and report released in July 2009. The design of NIDS envisaged data collection every two years. Elsewhere in the world such surveys have been invaluable in promoting understanding of who is making progress in a society and who is not and, importantly, what factors are driving these dynamics. In addition, panel data is invaluable for the purposes of evaluating and monitoring the efficacy of social policies and programmes. This is because the panel allows researchers and policy analysts to see how households and individuals are impacted when they become eligible for these programmes.
