Government Expenditure, Public Debt, and Poverty Reduction in Southern African Customs Union (SACU)

The chapter offers important insights regarding the role of government spending and public debt in reducing poverty, or no poverty as SDG 1 goal, for SACU. This study is also suitable given the outbreak of the Covid-19 that left many governments globally in destitute, hence requiring both social and economic interventions to help vulnerable people. Overall, the SACU economies have made considerable progress in reducing poverty within the last decades. In this light, the upper-middle-income countries, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, registered significant declines in poverty rates between 2000–2006 and 2010–2015, although lower-middle-income countries, Lesotho and Eswatini, recorded 57.1% and 63.0%, respectively. Some interesting, preliminary empirical and econometric results are found in terms of the relationship between public debt, financial development, corruption, unemployment, and poverty reduction. As such we provide original insights into the first SDG goal of no poverty which is cross-cutting including SDG 2 (no hunger), SDG 3 (good health), and SDG 4 (quality education).