Poverty and Physical Well-being among the Coloured Population in South Africa

Kris Inwood and Oliver Masakure

Economic History of Developing Regions, 2013, vol. 28, issue 2, 56-82

Abstract: We review the social construction of race and the experience of relative poverty and ill-health among South Africa's Coloured population. We argue that childhood deprivation among Coloureds and race-based inequality in physical well-being, which is still visible today, began at least as early as the 1870s. The historical literature points to differences in morbidity and mortality between Whites and Coloureds before World War Two. New evidence from military reports of stature points to regional, socio-economic and urban influences on physical well-being which differed between Coloureds and Whites. Coloureds were much shorter even after adjusting for potentially confounding influences. The gap in stature changed very little between men born in the 1870s and those born in the 1920s.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2013.866382

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