Abstract: The major cause of poverty is unemployment. This paper looks at aspects of the way government responds to claims that are made, chiefly by academics, about poverty and unemployment. Official statistics on poverty and unemployment enjoy little favour among senior politicians and civil...

For a large proportion of the South African population social welfare grants are an important source of income. Rapid increases in government expenditure on social security between 2000 and 2006 has further increased poor households’ reliance on welfare grants and has been important in the fi...

This country study evaluates the experience of the South African economy with respect to growth, poverty and inequality trends since the advent of democracy in 1994. The post-apartheid government took a definite turn toward greater spending on social security, while job creation and a narrowing...

Minimum wage legislation is central in South African policy discourse, with both strong support and strong opposition. The validity of either position depends, however, on the effectiveness of minimum wage enforcement. Using detailed matching of occupational, sectoral and locational codes in the...

One of the key interventions aimed at improving the welfare of South African households has been local government’s provision of a package of free basic services (FBS) to poor households. It is, however, not completely clear how different municipalities identify households which are eligible...

What prevents the unemployed in Khayelitsha, South Africa from trying self-employment? Perceptions of a small group of academic economists are presented and compared to the perceptions of unemployed Khayelitsha residents themselves. The largest differences in view-points are that a) academics...

This paper attempts to estimate the causal effect of government enforcement on compliance with minimum wages in South Africa, a country where considerable non-compliance exists. The number of labour inspectors per capita is used as a proxy for enforcement, whilst non-compliance is measured using...

I provide six possible employment creating policy options within the arena of principally, but not exclusively, active labour market policy. The notion is that interventions in these areas should provide for short-term and possibly long-term employment creation avenues and options for the...

In brief, the paper firstly summarises old and new theoretical and technical issues on measuring poverty, secondly analyses poverty from different perspectives and highlights various research findings on poverty trends in South Africa and thirdly clarifies the notion of 'second economy' and...

By monitoring the price changes experienced by some representative household, consumer price indices provide an important measure of changing purchasing power within a given economy. Group price indices offer one method of more accurately reflecting the inflation experiences of specific types of...