Not Separate, Not Equal: Poverty and Inequality in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Johannes G. Hoogeveen and Berk Özler ()

No wp739, William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series from William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross Business School

Abstract: As South Africa conducts a review of the first ten years of its new democracy, the question remains as to whether the economic inequalities of the apartheid era are beginning to fade. Using new, comparable consumption aggregates for 1995 and 2000, this paper finds that real per capita household expenditures declined for those at the bottom end of the expenditure distribution during this period of low GDP growth. As a result, poverty, especially extreme poverty, increased. Inequality also increased, mainly due to a jump in inequality among the African population. Even among subgroups of the population that experienced healthy consumption growth, such as the Coloureds, the rate of poverty reduction was low because the distributional shifts were not pro-poor.

Keywords: Poverty; Inequality; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr
Date: 2005-01-01
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Related works:
Journal Article: Not Separate, Not Equal: Poverty and Inequality in Post-apartheid South Africa (2007)
Journal Article: Not Separate, Not Equal: Poverty and Inequality in Post-apartheid South Africa (2007)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wdi:papers:2005-739

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