A Geographically Weighted Regression Analysis of Barriers to Youth’s Participation in Local Development Planning in Gauteng Province, South Africa

Abstract

With South Africa having a history of youth activism and a predominantly youthful population, this paper investigates why youth (18-34 years) do not participate in local development planning in Gauteng Province, South Africa using GCRO’s 2015/16 QoL data.  Across Gauteng, results show that 72.1%, 90.1%, and 98.1% did not attend ward committee, community development forum, and IDP meetings, respectively. The geographically weighted regression approach proved important in allowing us to investigate the spatial variation in non-attendance and heterogeneity in the associated correlates over the study area. Given the high likelihood that employed youth are more educated, has more income, for example, all these factors work together to consistently (all coefficients were positive) show that the higher the proportion of employed youth at ward level, the higher the likelihood for them not to participate in ward meetings. In contrast, the contributions of the level of education and proportions born in Gauteng, disabled, and who have never interacted with government were mixed – their relationship with youth’s non-participation in ward committee meeting ranged from negative to positive, compared to the contribution of the proportion of employed youth. Overall, these results are useful in spurring spatially targeted – either region wide or localised – policies.