Inequality in South Africa

M. Leibbrandt, Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón
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Abstract

Post-apartheid South Africa inherited one of the most unequal societies in the world in 1994 and inequality has featured prominently as a key socio-economic and policy challenge over the post-apartheid period. Yet, despite policy interventions aimed at reducing inequality, these high levels of inequality remain in place. Such persistence demands a better understanding of the mechanisms that reproduce and create inequalities. We start by consolidating the extensive research on South Africa’s income inequality and the emerging literature on wealth inequality. We go on to explore the interactions between these economic inequalities, spatial inequality and two key categorical inequalities, gender and race. These inequalities work collectively to stifle opportunity and agency in contemporary South Africa. We show this through the lens of recent work on social mobility that highlights very low levels of social mobility and the precariousness of upward mobility. We conclude by reviewing policies to overcome inequality against this prevailing reality. Some of these policies have addressed important drivers of inequality, but in isolation. This chapter has shown that such an approach will have limited effectiveness. A coherent, integrated approach is required. Derivatively, there is an urgent need for further interdisciplinary research on how to break these inequality traps.
南非的不平等
种族隔离后的南非在1994年继承了世界上最不平等的社会之一,不平等已成为种族隔离后时期一项重要的社会经济和政策挑战。然而,尽管旨在减少不平等的政策干预,这些高度不平等仍然存在。这种持久性要求我们更好地理解再生产和创造不平等的机制。我们首先整合对南非收入不平等的广泛研究和新兴的关于财富不平等的文献。我们继续探讨这些经济不平等,空间不平等和两个关键的分类不平等,性别和种族之间的相互作用。这些不平等共同扼杀了当代南非的机会和能动性。我们通过最近关于社会流动性的研究来证明这一点,这些研究强调了非常低的社会流动性水平和向上流动的不稳定性。最后,我们回顾了针对这一普遍现实克服不平等的政策。其中一些政策解决了造成不平等的重要因素,但都是孤立的。本章已经表明,这种办法的效力有限。需要一种连贯、综合的办法。由此可见,如何打破这些不平等陷阱,迫切需要进一步的跨学科研究。
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