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Article History

Received: 9 December 2025

Accepted: 8 May 2026

First Online: 24 May 2026

Declarations

:

: The paper utilised secondary data from the Statistics South Africa General Household Survey 2024, which is publicly available. The original data collection was conducted by Statistics South Africa in accordance with the Statistics Act, 1999 (Act No. 6 of 1999), and approved through Statistics South Africa’s internal ethical and data governance procedures. All procedures involving human participants during the original data collection complied with ethical standards and were conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. This formulation is consistent with Stats SA documentation, which confirms that: surveys are ethically reviewed internally, participation is voluntary, confidentiality and anonymisation are guaranteed. Informed consent was obtained from all participants by Statistics South Africa during the original data collection process for the General Household Survey 2024. Participation was voluntary, and respondents were informed of the survey’s purpose, their rights as participants, and the confidentiality of their responses. The authors had no direct contact with participants and analysed only fully anonymised secondary data.

: Ethical oversight for the data collection was provided by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) through its internal ethics and data governance processes, in accordance with the Statistics Act, 1999 (Act No. 6 of 1999). Since this study is a secondary analysis of anonymised, publicly available data, the authors did not require additional institutional ethics approval or IRB clearance.

: There is no reference to systematic guidelines for reporting a secondary study like this one. However, the STROBE (Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology) guidelines were followed when writing the manuscript.

: The authors affirms that this manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study being reported, that no important aspects of the study have been omitted and that any discrepancies from the study as planned (and, if relevant, registered) have been explained.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare no competing interests.