Black living standards in South Africa before democracy: New evidence from heights

Bokang Mpeta (), Johan Fourie and Kris Inwood
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Bokang Mpeta: Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University

No 10/2017, Working Papers from Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Very little income or wage data was systematically recorded on the living standards of South Africa’s black majority during much of the twentieth century. This paper uses four data sets to document, for the first time, an alternative measure of living standards: the stature of black South Africans over the course of the twentieth century. We find evidence to suggest that the first three decades of the century were particularly bad, perhaps due to the increasingly repressive labour policies in urban areas and famine and land expropriation that weighted especially heavily on the Basotho. The decade following South Africa’s departure from the gold standard, a higher international gold price and the demand for manufactured goods from South Africa due to the Second World War seem to have benefited both black and white South Africans. The data also allow us to disaggregate by ethnicity within the black population group, revealing levels of inequality within race group that has been neglected in the literature. Finally, we compare black and white living standards, revealing the large and widening levels of inequality that characterised twentieth-century South Africa.

Keywords: apartheid; living standards; South Africa; heights; anthropometric; twentieth century (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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