In this paper, we revisit 'what and who' is middle class in South Africa using data collected in the 2008 National Income Dynamics Study. First we consider how to identify the middle class based on two broad definitions adopted in the international literature: a middle class defined by the...

Most studies that explore the impact of relative standing on subjective well-being use objective measures of the individual’s relative position, such as the mean income of the reference group or the individual’s ranking in the relevant income distribution. In this paper, using a...

Alan Cobley (1990: 3) has argued that no sustained interest was taken in the subject of class in South Africa until the arrival of a generation of radical historians in the 1970s, and then the focus of concern was largely with the origins and development of a black working class in whose...

This paper examines the development of the middle class in post-apartheid South Africa, using data from the 1993 Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development, the 2000 Income and Expenditure Survey/Labour Force Survey and the 2008 National Income Dynamics Study. The affluent middle...

The emphasis on location-specific factors, such as climate or disease environment, in the explanation of development outcomes in colonial societies implicitly assumes that settler groups were homogenous. Using tax records, this paper shows that the French Huguenots who immigrated to Dutch South...

The Kuznets inequality-development hypothesis can be tested with time-series data rather than the cross-section analyses found in earlier literature. Single-country time-series analysis cannot be done without addressing endogeneity between output and inequality. South Africa has been...

This study analyses the factors influencing pricing of National Park visits in Kenya. A two step regression procedure is used to develop a pricing mechanism for Lake Nakuru National Park (LNNP). In the first stage, count data models are applied to estimate the Trip generating function to LNNP...

This study employs a novel approach to measure and analyse quality of life in the Gauteng City-Region of South Africa. A comprehensive composite index is constructed. Comparing the quality of life of different groups, groups such as Africans, residents in urban informal settlements and females...

I exploit the unexpected increase in employment in 1975, 76 and 77 in the South African homelands to compare the long term adult outcomes of children whose fathers benefitted from the employment increase to those who did not. Using a standard difference in difference approach I find that the...

This paper constructs a Good Society Index for 45 African countries, termed the Good African Society Index (GASI). The GASI consists of nine main indexes: (i) economic sustainability, (ii) democracy and freedom, (iii) child well-being, (iv) environment and infrastructure, (v) safety and...