Employment Insecurity, Democracy and Life Expectancy in South Africa and Neighbouring Countries

This study examines whether governance quality and labour-market insecurity are associated with societal well-being in Southern Africa, with South Africa as the focal case. An unbalanced country-year dataset for South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Eswatini over 2000–2024 combines life expectancy and socioeconomic indicators with the V-Dem liberal democracy index. Country fixed effects and a linear time trend are included, and heteroskedasticity-consistent HC3 intervals are reported. The final estimation sample contains 120 observations. Life expectancy increased substantially over time after accounting for observed covariates and time-invariant differences between countries. Unemployment has a negative but statistically imprecise association with life expectancy. The democracy coefficient is also negative and marginally imprecise, indicating that broad institutional scores do not translate mechanically into contemporaneous population-health gains within this short regional panel. The findings do not establish causality. They instead show a regional decoupling between formal democratic quality and live welfare, especially where unemployment, inequality and service-delivery constraints remain persistent. South Africa’s policy challenge is therefore not only to protect accountable institutions but also to improve their transmission into employment security, accessible services and measurable improvements in everyday well-being.