There has been very little detailed exploration of the relationship between wage income and household inequality in South Africa despite the relevance of this issue for many contemporary growth and development policy debates. This article is directed at such an analysis. It uses a decomposition...

This paper uses various decomposition techniques to understand the nature of household inequality in contemporary South Africa. It examines, firstly, the importance of race in overall inequality; secondly, the contribution of major income sources to national inequality; and thirdly, the...

In this paper we explore South Africa's personal income tax system using two microsimulation models. The first, SAMOD, simulates personal income tax and social benefits using a dataset derived from the nationally representative National Income Dynamics Study survey. The second, PITMOD, simulates...

South Africa exhibits extreme levels of income inequality and is ranked as one of the most unequal countries in the world. In order to measure these severe levels of inequality, it matters how we account for the different parts of the income distribution. Although the approach has gained...

Despite South Africa's need for inclusive economic growth, we find that the income trajectories of the rich continue to diverge from the rest of the income distribution. We combine household survey data and tax data (which, unlike household survey data, includes accurate data for the very rich)...

Tax administration statistics now provide considerably more complete and reliable measures of South African personal income and its distribution than the available household or other survey sources. However, there are difficulties in using tax data across time, as both policy and reporting...