Using alternative data sources on income and poverty with a shorter time lag makes it possible to discern trends that can inform the policy debate. A strong decline in poverty rates was recorded since 2000. This has since been confirmed by General Household Survey data that showed that the...

This paper offers evidence on the sensitivity of child poverty in South Africa to changes in the Adult Equivalence Scale (AES) and updates the child poverty profile based on the Income and Expenditure Survey 2005/06. Setting the poverty line at the 40th percentile of households calculated with...

This paper, originally written at the time of the political transition, provides an overview of social security issues at that time. A sustained improvement in the living standards of the poor requires economic growth and investment in human capital to allow the poor to benefit from that growth,...

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...

This paper makes a unique contribution to the South African literature in combining data from an alternative source of household survey data – the All Media and Product Survey (AMPS) – with national accounts income trends for this country, in the recent tradition of research on the world...

This paper provides a broad overview of the economic dimensions of the educational situation in South Africa a decade after the political transition. An important question is whether changes since the transition have substantially ameliorated the role of race in education. Census and survey data...

The study uses an asset index of consumer durables to track changes in household wealth in Ghana during the recent period of strong growth. Using the Ghana Living Standards Survey of 1998 that contains both wealth data and consumer durable data, the authors demonstrate that the asset index...

Black consumption patterns differ from those of whites, even when considering income levels and household size. This applies particularly to the black middle class, the subject of intense public interest. This paper postulates that this difference results not from cultural differences in taste...

Supply-side solutions to health-care provision dominate the South African debate about health care. These solutions are often premised on views that health resources are too concentrated in the private health sector – which supposedly serves only a small minority of the population – and thus...

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...