And I mean, let's just look at South African wealth inequality, in international perspective, with this in mind

(source: amory-gethin.fr/files/pdf/Ch...)

Has been decline in inter-racial inequality, but almost all driven by changes at the top. There are ~same number of black African people in top 10% as whites. But this is a country where black Africans are ~80% of population, while whites are ~8%. And look at that top 1%...

At top of income distribution it's about jobs but also (generational) wealth. SA is obscenely unequal. And the top is absurdly white.

This graph shows racial composition of each part of SA income distribution, from poor to rich.

Source here & next tweet: amory-gethin.fr/files/pdf/Ch...

A big cause of this disparity is jobs and unemployment. And it's impossible to look at the numbers below and not see that it is directly a continued apartheid legacy (and main South African problem is *insufficient* redress & support to black South Africans, not other way round)

Firstly, yes it is about apartheid. One way to see this: racial classification was (is) messy business. Many were on edge of being classified one way or another. Impact on men of being classified white rather than coloured? Huge income increase which explains >90% of observed gap

Come attend the 2024 SALDRU December Workshop!

12-13 December, School of Economics, U of Cape Town.

We've got a great list of speakers, and v pleased the keynote will be Dennis Egger (@eggerdennis.bsky.social) presenting "Slack & Economic Development".

All welcome! RSVP: forms.gle/cwdPjw7iEjqa...

Our aim is to provide a regular venue for overseas-based & local researchers to present & engage with frontier research.

We will also have a session for local PhD students.

For 2024 ad-hoc workshop, please submit papers/abstracts by 18 October, via the link above.

Do you want to visit sunny summer Cape Town? Are you doing innovative Economics research? Present at the
SALDRU December Workshop!

While first full workshop will start next year, we are also holding an ad-hoc version this year, *12-13 December 2024*.

Details: www.saldru.uct.ac.za/2024/10/03/s...

Staggering. No South Africa 2022 Census data is going to be released on INCOME, LABOUR, & MORTALITY/FERTILITY (??? the core of most basic census results!) because of unspecified data quality issues. But we must somehow still accept Stats SA's (un-evidenced) claim that the census is fit for purpose

A somewhat ironic source for this claim 😬

Interestingly, an updated 2021 working paper of the RCT research includes this figure... so you'd think the RCT researchers would seriously investigate this apparent reason for non-payment, given the stated objectives of improving water access & revenue collection? (3/7)

what a game

The Jacarandas are putting on a show in Pretoria 🎆

Nice! I always think a nice framing to conclude discussion of subjective/relative/absolute poverty lines is this figure from Ravallion & Chen (2011, REStat), showing how even absolute national lines are ultimately “weakly” relative wrt income/consumption. Also where $1-a-day variants come from!