This data set contains the responses from 476 participants regarding household demographic information, poverty perceptions, household income and expenditure patterns, food and nutrition security, asset status of the household, health status, children and education, unemployment and poverty, employment and income generating history of household members, credit risk, general overview of the EPWP project, EPWP employment, skill and training profile, and personal/household benefit from EPWP. The study targeted 400 EPWP beneficiaries and the actual realised sample was 376 EPWP current and past beneficiaries from 15 EPWP projects in 4 KZN districts. The study also targeted 100 non-beneficiaries for comparisons. The data set contains 476 cases and 1087 variables.