South Africa is one of the most unequal economies globally. In this paper, we examine the design of its personal income tax (PIT), with a focus on its redistributive function. We apply the Pfähler decomposition method to analyse the redistributive effects of key components of the South African...

Levels of interpersonal income inequality in African countries are much higher than they were long assumed to be. The literature on politics in sub-Saharan Africa says little about the redistributive pressures arising from this, other than to argue that class politics is rarely observed in...

This paper investigates the relationship between inequality and redistributive taxation. It provides a review of existing research on the topic and a cross-country empirical analysis of this relationship. Using data from the World Income Inequality Database, Government Revenue Dataset, and other...

What is the relationship between inequality and growth? This question has occupied and fascinated social scientists for more than a century. This article critically reviews the recent empirical and theoretical literature on the complex interplay between inequality and economic growth. Inequality...

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...

This paper explores the distributional impact of lowering the value-added tax rate for standard-rated items in Tanzania Mainland. Using a static tax-benefit microsimulation model- TAZMOD-which is underpinned by data derived from the Household Budget Survey 2017/18, reductions in value-added...

In this review, I provide an overview of the literature investigating the social psychology of economic inequality, focusing on individuals' understandings, perceptions, and reactions to inequality. I begin by describing different ways of measuring perceptions of inequality, and conclude that...

Declining social and economic inequalities since the late 1990s coincided with several basic shifts in Latin America's political landscape, including an electoral turn to the left and a revival of social mobilization from below. These shifts helped to 'repoliticize' inequality and return...

This study examines the rise and fall in income inequality in Ecuador over the past two decades. Falling income equality during the 2000s partly coincides with the rise to power of a "new leftist" government, but the trend was already set early in the decade. The recent trend is mainly...

Although the effect of fiscal drag is well studied in the industrialized world, empirical evidence from developing economies remains limited. Against this backdrop, this study aims to explore the effect of fiscal drag on income distribution and work incentives. To this end, the study employs...