Pretoria - More than half of SA’s population is living in poverty, data from Statistics South Africa revealed.

According to the Poverty Trends Report for 2006 to 2015, 30.4 million people (55.5% of the population) is living in poverty. This is up from the 53.2% or 27.3 million people reported in 2011.

Statistician general Pali Lehohla said the statistics look at how South Africa has moved to reduce poverty. Over a period of time it was a movement almost parallel to the x-axis, a flat movement. “Meaning poverty depth or intensity was difficult to deal with,” he said.