The first democratic elections in 1994 brought about the promise for equal opportunity and an overall improvement of living standards for the majority of the South African population. However, 20 years after the democratization of South Africa, levels of inequality remain stubbornly high. The...

We use a fiscal incidence model based on the South African 2014/15 Living Conditions Survey to simulate the poverty reduction impacts of a selection of medium-to-long-term social grant options with the goal of replacing the existing special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress grant upon its...

This paper uses a recent household survey and the CEQ framework to revisit and extend previous research on the impact of fiscal policy on income redistribution, and poverty in South Africa. We find, in accordance with previous research, that direct taxes and cash transfers are overall...

A substantial amount of research has been conducted examining inequality in South Africa using multiple data sources. We provide an overview of this research in this paper. Furthermore, we use nationally representative survey data to estimate income and consumption inequality in South Africa...

Work done by the African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research (ACEIR) has documented the many-faceted nature of inequality in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. Conventionally measured inequality ranges from moderate (in Ghana) to extremely high (in South Africa). Trying to tell one...

We synthesize the findings from several recent papers on South Africa's very high income inequality. These papers use new datasets-including income tax data-and new empirical methods to investigate the drivers of household income and individual earnings inequality in South Africa. Increased...

Longitudinal surveys can give insight into economic mobility, which allows us to understand how markers of (dis)advantage are consequential in determining material conditions in the present, and how these markers structure economic opportunity over time. In this paper we show that this dynamic...

This paper explores the impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa on income poverty and inequality in South Africa. Using a static tax-benefit microsimulation model with input datasets that were adjusted to reflect people's earned incomes just before the pandemic (March...

We use individual-level tax administrative data to estimate personal income inequality among the tax-compliant population in South Africa over the period 2011-21. Our results indicate that inequality of this population rose slightly over the period, with the Gini coefficient increasing from 0.64...

High unemployment in many OECD countries is often attributed, at least in part, to the generosity and long duration of unemployment compensation. It is therefore instructive to examine a country where high unemployment exists despite the near complete absence of an unemployment insurance system....