South African children aged between 5 and 17 years are expected to help the family and school by participating in both economic and non-economic tasks. This is the case particularly in the deep rural areas of the `former homelands' where there are few job opportunities for adults, and where electricity and piped water are rare. For most children, however, this type of work does not take up a large proportion of their time. Nearly half (45% or 6,04 million) of South African children aged between 5 and 17 years (inclusive) were engaged in one or another kind of work-related activities, when using low time-based cut-off points (see definition below).
When higher cut-offpoints used, 36% (4,82 million) of such children were engaged in work. As many as 51% of children living in the deep rural areas, that are mainly in the apartheid-created former `homelands', were engaged in at least one form of work activity. Among children living in commercial farming areas, 35% were engaged in work activities. In informal urban areas the proportion of children involved in work decreased to 30% and informal urban areas to 19%. Of all children aged 5-17, 0.9% (118 000) were engaged in economic work for three hours or more per week in commercial agriculture,0 .2%( 26 000) in maufacturing,0 .01% (2 000) in construction and 0% (none were found) in mining. These were some of the findings of the Survey of activities of young people (SAYP), which was conducted in June and July 1999 by Statistics South Africa (StatsSA). The lower time-based cut-of fpoints of work used in this publication areas follows: " one hour or more per week on an economic activity (which is comparable with the internationally accepted definition of `economic activities'), " five hours or more per week on school maintenance or " seven hours or more on household chores. The cut-off point used more commonly in this publication for economic
activity is three hours or more per week, which is referred to as `the higher cut-off points'. However, school maintenance and household chores retain the same cut-off points whether the low or the higher cut-off points are used. The survey also investigated various other factors that influenced children's health and development,
such as the nature of the environment within which the children worked, and whether the work affected their schooling.