A series of national accounts-consistent estimates of poverty and inequality in South Africa
Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No. WP09/2007Publication date: 2007
Author(s):
[protected email address] (Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch)
[protected email address] (Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch)
[protected email address] (Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch)
[protected email address] (Department of Economics, University of Stellenbosch)
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 distribution of income performed by Bhalla (2002), Karshenas (2003), Bourguignon and Morrisson (2002), Sala-i-Martin (2002a; 2002b), and Quah (2002), amongst others. Its usefulness lies in arriving at alternative estimates of post-transition poverty and inequality that are consistent with the story that national accounts and other official data collectively tell us about the path of the South African economy during the post-transition period. While the method of scaling survey distribution data by national accounts means is somewhat controversial, it is not clear that the distributional trends obtained using the post-transition sets of either the IESs or the Population Censuses are more reliable, given serious deficiencies in both sources of data. Adjusted distributions yield lower levels of poverty and a stronger decline in poverty during the second half of the period than the figures obtained from the raw AMPS data. While the levels of poverty obtained using adjusted income distributions are artificially low, the derived downward trend is supported by a number of official data sources.
JEL Classification:D6, I32, I38
Keywords:Poverty, Inequality, Income distribution Analysis, South Africa
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Monday 28 July 202512:00-13:00
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Topic: "Two competing approaches in South African competition policy: merger control and anti-cartel enforcement over the past 30 years"
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Topic: "Economic History: TBC"
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18 Jul 2025 Encouraging data, but messy politics while US tariff deadline loomsThe big global data prints of the week came on Tuesday, with better-than-expected Chinese GDP growth for Q2 and US core CPI coming in lower than expected, but still (finally) reflecting some signs of tariffs being passed on to consumers. Locally, the uptick in mining production and retail sales was positive for Q2 GDP dynamics. In addition to the data,...
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