Using a constructed data series and another data series based on the All Media and Products surveys (AMPS), this paper explores trends in poverty and income distribution over the post-transition period. To steer clear of an unduly optimistic conclusion, assumptions are chosen that would tend to...

Not surprisingly, the education system is widely perceived to be the major tool to overcome human capital and labour market inequalities in South Africa. This paper asks how well the education system accomplishes this goal. The first part of the paper examines human capital differentials between...

Firstly, the paper at tempts to identify the features that distinguish the affluent and specifically the black affluent from the rest of the population with a descriptive analysis. The paper investigates how affluence predictors vary between different race groups. It shows a dramatic increase in...

This paper provides an analysis of poverty in South Africa by focussing on the labour market. Gauteng, South Africa's economic powerhouse, has long been dependent on immigration to supply its labour requirements, a phenomenon deeply rooted in the provinces early economic history and the...

Increasing reference in the media and public discussions to high and rising levels of graduate unemployment in the South African labour market has raised concern about the functionality of South Africa’s higher education system and the employability of the graduates that it produces. While...

Given the nature of apartheid, social spending incidence figures were collected by race for many decades. An analysis of these figures shows an important structural break in racial patterns of social spending in the mid-1970s, with a major shift towards the black population. This left the...

To a large degree, the notoriously high levels of income inequality in South Africa have their roots in differential access to wage-earning opportunities in the labour market, which in turn are influenced by family background. This paper therefore investigates the role that parents' education...

Social grants may play an important role in mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDS. Eligibility for these grants is driven in part by the increasing burden of chronic illness, the mounting orphan crisis and the impoverishment of households associated with the epidemic. This article investigates the...

This paper analyses a previously unused source of data - the All Media and Product Survey (AMPS) - to arrive at alternative estimates of the post-transition poverty path. The motivations for using this non-official data source are twofold: concern over the comparability of the existing official...