IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ldr/cssrwp/075.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Income inequality after apartheid

Author

Listed:
  • Jeremy Seekings
  • Murray Leibbrandt

    (SALDRU, School of Economics, University of Cape Town)

  • Nicoli Nattrass

Abstract

This paper investigates changes in and patterns of income inequality in South Africa during the post-apartheid period 1994 to 2004. While findings show a rapidly growing high-income African population (a trend that began before 1994 and continued thereafter) as well as rising real wages for workers in formal employment, overall levels of income inequality have not been declining This is due to rising unemployment and a small informal sector that have therefore left unchanged South Africa's high level of income inequality. If anything, overall inequality has worsened. Inter-racial inequality has decreased while intra-racial inequality has increased. Opportunities have improved for some African people in South Africa, but not for all: a lack of human and social capital leaves many with little chance of rising out of poverty; AIDS-related mortality and morbidity are likely to exacerbate stratification and further increase inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy Seekings & Murray Leibbrandt & Nicoli Nattrass, 2004. "Income inequality after apartheid," SALDRU/CSSR Working Papers 075, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
  • Handle: RePEc:ldr:cssrwp:075
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.opensaldru.uct.ac.za/handle/11090/643
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. H. Bhorat, 1999. "The October Household Survey, Unemployment and the Informal Sector: A Note," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 67(2), pages 143-146, June.
    2. Aliber, Michael, 2003. "Chronic Poverty in South Africa: Incidence, Causes and Policies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 473-490, March.
    3. H. Bhorat & J. Hodge, 1999. "Decomposing Shifts in Labour Demand in South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 67(3), pages 155-168, September.
    4. Haroon Bhorat, 2003. "The Post-Apartheid Challenge: Labour Demand Trends in the South African Labour Market, 1995-1999," Working Papers 03082, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hélène Maisonnave & Bernard Decaluwe & Margaret Chitiga, 2016. "Does South African Affirmative Action Policy Reduce Poverty? A CGE Analysis," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 8(3), pages 212-227, September.
    2. Oppel, Annalena, 2021. "Normalizing necessity? Support networks and racial inequality in Namibia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    3. Annalena Oppel, 2021. "Exploring economic support networks amidst racial inequality in Namibia," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-102, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Haroon Bhorat, 2003. "The Post-Apartheid Challenge: Labour Demand Trends in the South African Labour Market, 1995-1999," Working Papers 03082, University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit.
    2. Frederick C.v.N. Fourie, 2011. "The South African unemployment debate: three worlds, three discourses?," SALDRU Working Papers 63, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    3. Biniam E. Bedasso, 2015. "How Does Human Capital Shape the Social Contract?," Working Papers 46, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    4. Baiyegunhi, L.J.S. & Oppong, B.B., 2016. "Commercialisation of mopane worm (Imbrasia belina) in rural households in Limpopo Province, South Africa," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 141-148.
    5. Bhorat, Haroon & Goga, Sumayya & Stanwix, Benjamin, 2014. "Skills-biased labour demand and the pursuit of inclusive growth in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 130, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Reza C. Daniels, 2012. "A Framework for Investigating Micro Data Quality, with Application to South African Labour Market Household Surveys," SALDRU Working Papers 90, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    7. Vincent Dadam & Nicola Viegi, 2021. "Estimating a New Keynesian Wage Phillips Curve," Working Papers 202107, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    8. Geeta G. Kingdon & John B. Knight, 2000. "Are searching and non-searching unemployment distinct states when unemployment is high? The case of South Africa," CSAE Working Paper Series 2000-02, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    9. P.A. Black, 2002. "On The Case For “Black Economic Empowerment” In South Africa*," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 70(8), pages 1148-1162, December.
    10. P.D.F. Strydom, 2003. "Work And Employment In The Information Economy," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 71(1), pages 1-20, March.
    11. Murray Leibbrandt & James Levinsohn & Justin McCrary, 2005. "Incomes in South Africa Since the Fall of Apartheid," NBER Working Papers 11384, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Haroon Bhorat & Karmen Naidoo & Morné Oosthuizen & Kavisha Pillay, 2015. "Demographic, employment, and wage trends in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 141, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Lumengo Bonga‐bonga, 2009. "The South African Aggregate Production Function: Estimation Of The Constant Elasticity Of Substitution Function," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 77(2), pages 332-349, June.
    14. Sabina Alkire & Suman Seth, 2015. "Identifying destitution through linked subsets of multidimensionally poor: An ordinal approach," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2015-151, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. Alberto Behar, 2005. "Does training benefit those who do not get any? Elasticities of complementarity and factor price in South Africa," Economics Series Working Papers 244, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    16. Krishna, Anirudh, 2006. "Pathways out of and into poverty in 36 villages of Andhra Pradesh, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 271-288, February.
    17. Mich Brookes & Timothy Hinks, 2004. "The Racial Employment Gap In South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 72(3), pages 573-580, September.
    18. Rulof Burger & Servaas Berg & Dieter Fintel, 2015. "The Unintended Consequences of Education Policies on South African Participation and Unemployment," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 83(1), pages 74-100, March.
    19. Baiyegunhi, L.J.S. & Fraser, Gavin C.G., 2010. "Determinants of Household Poverty Dynamics in Rural Regions of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa," 2010 AAAE Third Conference/AEASA 48th Conference, September 19-23, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa 97078, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    20. Rulof Burger & Rachel Jafta & Dieter von Fintel, 2016. "Affirmative action policies and the evolution of post-apartheid South Africa's racial wage gap," WIDER Working Paper Series 066, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ldr:cssrwp:075. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alison Siljeur (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sauctza.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.