Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/283786 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2023/90
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
A substantial amount of research has been conducted examining inequality in South Africa using multiple data sources. We provide an overview of this research in this paper. Furthermore, we use nationally representative survey data to estimate income and consumption inequality in South Africa between 1993 and 2017, and we discuss the comparability of income and consumption measures across surveys. We compare our estimates of inequality to those in the World Income Inequality Database (WIID), which provides adjusted inequality estimates to ensure consistency across time and countries. Despite these adjustments, there are some large fluctuations in income inequality estimates from the WIID,which can be partly attributed to data comparability problems. The overall trend in post-apartheid South Africa indicates an increase in income and wealth inequality. However, estimates of inequality levels over time are influenced in part by methodological changes implemented across multiple surveys over time, making definitive conclusions about inequality levels and trends difficult.
Subjects: 
income distribution
inequality
surveys
South Africa
JEL: 
D21
C83
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9267-398-7
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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