South Africa


Download this chartEmbed this chart for South Africa on your website
Download the database (.xls)Download the entire Chartbook (.pdf)
Share this:Email this to someoneTweet about this on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on Reddit

Sources and References

Sources:

Overall inequality: Gini coefficient of per capita income from Statistics South Africa, 2014, Table 5, linked at 2005/2006 to series from 1993 from Leibbrandt et al (2010a, Table 5.17), linked at 1991/1993 to estimates for 1975, 1991 and 1996 of Whiteford and van Seventer (2000).

Top income shares: Shares of top 1 per cent in total gross income from WID.world (excluding capital gains), based on work of Alvaredo and Atkinson (2011) updated by the same authors for latest figures. It is worth noting that the top shares series have a break in 1990. Data refer to married couple and single adults before 1990 and to individuals from 1990.

Poverty measures: There is no official poverty line. A variety of poverty standards have been employed – see Budlender, Leibbrandt  and Woolard (2015). Series 1 taken from Statistics South Africa (2014, Table 3) based on the Income and Expenditure Survey (IES) and Living Conditions Survey (LCS), relating to percentage of individuals living in households with per capita expenditure below the “upper bound” poverty line. Series 2 relates to the percentage of individuals (all races) living in households with per capita income below R 3,000 (at 2000 prices) by Leibbrandt et al (2010, Table 1.3); linked at 2000 back to 1970 using data from van der Berg and Louw (2004, Table 5) (average of pessimistic and optimistic estimates taken for 2000).

Dispersion of earnings: Earnings at top decile as percentage of median earning from Leibbrandt et al (2010a, Table 5.19).

Wealth inequality: No suitable data were found.

References: