Trends in South African Income Distribution and Poverty since the Fall of Apartheid
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
In this paper, a detailed analysis of changes in both poverty and inequality since the fall of Apartheid, and the potential drivers of such developments is presented, using national survey data from 1993, 2000 and 2008.Abstract:
This report presents a detailed analysis of changes in both poverty and inequality since the fall of Apartheid, and the potential drivers of such developments. Use is made of national survey data from 1993, 2000 and 2008. These data show that South Africa’s high aggregate level of income inequality increased between 1993 and 2008. The same is true of inequality within each of South Africa’s four major racial groups. Income poverty has fallen slightly in the aggregate but it persists at acute levels for the African and Coloured racial groups. Poverty in urban areas has increased. There have been continual improvements in non-monetary well-being (for example, access to piped water, electricity and formal housing) over the entire post-Apartheid period up to 2008.
From a policy point of view it is important to flag the fact that intra-African inequality and poverty trends increasingly dominate aggregate inequality and poverty in South Africa. Race-based redistribution may become less effective over time relative to policies addressing increasing inequality within each racial group and especially within the African group. Rising inequality within the labourmarket – due both to rising unemployment and rising earnings inequality – lies behind rising levels of aggregate inequality. These labour market trends have prevented the labour market from playing a positive role in poverty alleviation. Social assistance grants (mainly the child support grant, the disability grant and the old-age pension) alter the levels of inequality only marginally but have been crucial in reducing poverty among the poorest households. There are still a large number of families that are ineligible for grants because of the lack of appropriate documents. This suggests that there is an important role for the Department of Home Affairs in easing the process of vital registration.read more
Citations
More filters
Book
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
Daron Acemoglu,James A. Robinson +1 more
TL;DR: Acemoglu and Robinson as discussed by the authors argue that incentives and institutions are what separate the have and have-nots, and that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep it, the key to ensuring these incentives is sound institutions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Book Review: OECD, Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries:
TL;DR: In this paper, a redistribuição governamental através do sistema de benefícios fiscais afecta estas tendências.
Journal ArticleDOI
Homogeneous Middles vs. Heterogeneous Tails, and the End of the ‘Inverted‐U’: It's All About the Share of the Rich
TL;DR: The authors examined distributional disparities within nations and found that about 80% of the world's population now lives in regions whose median country has a Gini close to 40, while Eastern Europe follows a distributional path similar to the Nordic countries.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Rise and Decline of General Laws of Capitalism
Daron Acemoglu,Daron Acemoglu,Daron Acemoglu,James A. Robinson,James A. Robinson,James A. Robinson +5 more
TL;DR: The authors argue that general economic laws are unhelpful as a guide to understand the past or predict the future, because they ignore the central role of political and economic institutions, as well as the endogenous evolution of technology, in shaping the distribution of resources in society.
Journal ArticleDOI
Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa
TL;DR: Seekings and Nattrass as mentioned in this paper present an immense amount of quantitative and qualitative information regarding inequality in South Africa during the apartheid and post-apartheid periods, concluding that there was a significant redistribution of income by the state to poorer sections of the population.
References
More filters
Book
Labour force survey
TL;DR: In 2020, the employment rate went down slightly for those aged 20 to 59 compared with 2018, while women's employment rate remained almost unchanged as discussed by the authors, and the employment rates among mothers of families with underage children rose from 77.2 to 79.2 per cent.
Journal ArticleDOI
Inequality decomposition by population subgroups
TL;DR: In this paper, the implications of imposing a weak aggregation condition on inequality indices, so that the overall inequality value can be computed from information concerning the size, mean, and inequality value of each population subgroup, are examined.
Journal ArticleDOI
Large Cash Transfers to the Elderly in South Africa
Anne Case,Angus Deaton +1 more
TL;DR: The authors examined the social pension in South Africa, where large cash sums-about twice the median per capita income of African households-are paid to people qualified by age but irrespective of previous contributions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Book Review: OECD, Growing Unequal? Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries:
TL;DR: In this paper, a redistribuição governamental através do sistema de benefícios fiscais afecta estas tendências.
Quarterly Labour Force Survey
TL;DR: The Labour Force Survey is a continuous, household survey, conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on behalf of the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) which provides a wide range of data on labour market statistics and related topics such as training, qualifications, income and disability.