Despite the emphasis given to poverty reduction in policy statements and a substantial increase in social spending, money-metric poverty has shown little improvement since South Africa's transition to democracy in 1994. Alternative approaches to measuring well-being and inequality may show a...

Using a longitudinal survey of South African households over the 1993-2004 period, this paper evaluates changes in income distribution since the end of apartheid. Inequality amongst these households has markedly increased this period as initially better off households consistently improved their...

Social capital has been identified as an important avenue of upward mobility for poorer people. However, recent theoretical work suggests that in highly polarized societies, the accumulation of social capital is likely to be fragmented and ineffective for people at the bottom of the economic...

Recent theoretical work hypothesises that a polarised society like South Africa will suffer a legacy of ineffective social capital and blocked pathways of upward mobility that leaves large numbers of people trapped in poverty. To explore these ideas, this paper employs a mix of quantitative and...

Debate over the nature of South African society has continued through the first decade of democratic government, including the question of a 'First' and a 'Second' economy. This paper focuses on the numbers and characteristics of those who might fit into the 'Second'. The data examined suggest...

Increasingly complex societies necessitate the collection of more information, or more sophisticated ways of estimation. This places upward pressure on the cost of collecting such information, as family structures are more complex, mobility more frequent, and willingness to provide information...

The panel study known as the KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study (KIDS) has been extended by a new wave of data collection conducted in 2004. This third wave of the study interviewed 865 households containing core adult members from 760 of the households contacted in 1993. It also conducted...