Table 2.

Reported status of children's biological parents.

	October Household Survey 1995 (%)	October Household Survey 1997 (%)	General Household Survey 2002 (%)	General Household Survey 2005 (%)
Both alive	85.09	87.82	84.57	82.5
Mother dead Father alive	1.49	1.49	2.88	3.01
Father dead Mother alive	11.84	9.58	10.81	11.37
Both dead	1.59	1.12	1.75	3.12
Total	100	100	100	100

Notes: 1. The OHS 1999 was excluded from this analysis because it only asks about the mother's status and in a different section of the questionnaire from the other surveys.

2. A conservative approach to orphaning was adopted, in that parents whose status was reported as unknown are included in the alive category. The numbers involved, however, are very small, particularly in the later surveys.

Source: Own calculations based on Stats SA data.