IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/sajeco/v90y2022i2p214-242.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Snakes and ladders and loaded dice: Poverty dynamics and inequality in South Africa between 2008 and 2017

Author

Listed:
  • Simone Schotte
  • Rocco Zizzamia
  • Murray Leibbrandt

Abstract

Longitudinal surveys allow us to understand how markers of (dis)advantage determine present material welfare and economic upward or downward mobility over time. In this paper, we use five waves of panel data to empirically assess the extent and dynamics of poverty in South Africa between 2008 and 2017. Investigating the correlates of poverty entries and exits, we analyse how multidimensional inequalities in terms of household‐ and individual‐level characteristics relate to these dynamics and identify markers of vulnerability. We utilise these markers to classify the South African population into five strata characterised by their present and future risk to poverty.

Suggested Citation

  • Simone Schotte & Rocco Zizzamia & Murray Leibbrandt, 2022. "Snakes and ladders and loaded dice: Poverty dynamics and inequality in South Africa between 2008 and 2017," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 90(2), pages 214-242, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:sajeco:v:90:y:2022:i:2:p:214-242
    DOI: 10.1111/saje.12308
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12308
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/saje.12308?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ronelle Burger & Camren McAravey & Servaas van der Berg, 2017. "The Capability Threshold: Re-examining the Definition of the Middle Class in an Unequal Developing Country," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 89-106, January.
    2. Nayoung Lee & Geert Ridder & John Strauss, 2017. "Estimation of Poverty Transition Matrices with Noisy Data," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(1), pages 37-55, January.
    3. Ingrid Woolard & Stephan Klasen, 2005. "Determinants of Income Mobility and Household Poverty Dynamics in South Africa," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(5), pages 865-897.
    4. Lorenzo Cappellari & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2004. "Modelling low income transitions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(5), pages 593-610.
    5. Aliber, Michael, 2003. "Chronic Poverty in South Africa: Incidence, Causes and Policies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 473-490, March.
    6. Carter, Michael R. & May, Julian, 2001. "One Kind of Freedom: Poverty Dynamics in Post-apartheid South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(12), pages 1987-2006, December.
    7. Alkire, Sabina & Foster, James, 2011. "Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 476-487, August.
    8. Justin Visagie & Dorrit Posel, 2013. "A reconsideration of what and who is middle class in South Africa," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(2), pages 149-167, June.
    9. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    10. Jacobs, Peter T., 2009. "The status of household food security targets in South Africa," Agrekon, Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), vol. 48(4), pages 1-24, December.
    11. Lorenzo Cappellari & Stephen P. Jenkins, 2008. "Estimating low pay transition probabilities accounting for endogenous selection mechanisms," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 57(2), pages 165-186, April.
    12. Schotte, Simone & Zizzamia, Rocco & Leibbrandt, Murray, 2018. "A poverty dynamics approach to social stratification: The South African case," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 88-103.
    13. Lorenzo Cappellari & Stephen P. Jemkins, 2002. "Who Stays Poor? Who Becomes Poor? Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(478), pages 60-67, March.
    14. Adato, Michelle & Lund, Francie & Mhlongo, Phakama, 2007. "Methodological Innovations in Research on the Dynamics of Poverty: A Longitudinal Study in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 247-263, February.
    15. Murray Leibbrandt & Ingrid Woolard & Arden Finn & Jonathan Argent, 2010. "Trends in South African Income Distribution and Poverty since the Fall of Apartheid," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 101, OECD Publishing.
    16. Finn, Arden & Leibbrandt, Murray, 2013. "The dynamics of poverty in the first three waves of NIDS," SALDRU Working Papers 119, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    17. Arden Finn & Murray Leibbrandt & James Levinsohn, 2014. "Income mobility in a high-inequality society: Evidence from the first two waves of the National Income Dynamics Study," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 16-30, January.
    18. Michelle Adato & Michael Carter & Julian May, 2006. "Exploring poverty traps and social exclusion in South Africa using qualitative and quantitative data," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(2), pages 226-247.
    19. Ronelle Burger & Cindy Lee Steenekamp & Servaas van der Berg & Asmus Zoch, 2015. "The emergent middle class in contemporary South Africa: Examining and comparing rival approaches," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 25-40, January.
    20. Ihsaan Bassier & Ingrid Woolard, 2021. "Exclusive Growth? Rapidly Increasing Top Incomes Amid Low National Growth in South Africa," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 89(2), pages 246-273, June.
    21. Arden Finn & Murray Leibbrandt, 2016. "The dynamics of poverty in the first four waves of NIDS," SALDRU Working Papers 174, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    22. Altman, M. & Hart, Tim G.B. & Jacobs, Peter T., 2009. "Household food security status in South Africa," Agrekon, Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), vol. 48(4), pages 1-17, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kishan Shah, 2022. "Diagnosing South Africa’s High Unemployment and Low Informality," CID Working Papers 138a, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    2. Simone Schotte & Rocco Zizzamia, 2023. "The livelihood impacts of COVID-19 in urban South Africa: a view from below," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 1-30, January.
    3. Alexia Lochmann & Nidhi Rao & Martin A. Rossi, 2023. "The Long-Run Effects of South Africa’s Forced Resettlements on Employment Outcomes," CID Working Papers 141a, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    4. Alexia Lochmann, 2022. "Diagnosing Drivers of Spatial Exclusion: Places, People, and Policies in South Africa’s Former Homelands," CID Working Papers 140a, Center for International Development at Harvard University.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rocco Zizzamia & Simone Schotte & Murray Leibbrandt, 2019. "Snakes and ladders and loaded dice: Poverty dynamics and inequality in South Africa, 2008-2017," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-25, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Schotte, Simone & Zizzamia, Rocco & Leibbrandt, Murray, 2018. "A poverty dynamics approach to social stratification: The South African case," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 88-103.
    3. Simone Schotte & Rocco Zizzamia & Murray Leibbrandt, 2017. "Social stratification, life chances and vulnerability to poverty in South Africa," SALDRU Working Papers 208, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    4. Tobias Lechtenfeld & Asmus Zoch, 2014. "Income Convergence in South Africa: Fact or Measurement Error?," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 157, Courant Research Centre PEG.
    5. Marisa von Fintel & Asmus Zoch, 2015. "The dynamics of child poverty in South Africa between 2008 and 2012: An analysis using the National Income Dynamics Study," Working Papers 05/2015, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    6. Bigsten, Arne & Shimeles, Abebe, 2008. "Poverty Transition and Persistence in Ethiopia: 1994-2004," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 1559-1584, September.
    7. Bassier, Ihsaan & Budlender, Joshua & Zizzamia, Rocco & Leibbrandt, Murray & Ranchhod, Vimal, 2021. "Locked down and locked out: Repurposing social assistance as emergency relief to informal workers," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    8. Marisa Fintel & Asmus Zoch & Servaas Berg, 2017. "The Dynamics of Child Poverty in South Africa Between 2008 and 2012," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 10(4), pages 945-969, December.
    9. Frederich Kirsten & Ilse Botha & Mduduzi Biyase & Marinda Pretorius, 2023. "Determinants of Subjective Social Status in South Africa," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 168(1), pages 1-24, August.
    10. Simone Schotte, 2019. "Structural poverty dynamics in urban South Africa: A mixed-methods investigation," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-100, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. Rocco Zizzamia & Simone Schotte & Murray Leibbrandt & Vimal Ranchhod, 2016. "Vulnerability and the Middle Class in South Africa," SALDRU Working Papers 188, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    12. Anderson, Bret, 2012. "Converting Asset Holdings into Livelihood: An Empirical Study on the Role of Household Agency in South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(7), pages 1394-1406.
    13. Arden Finn & Murray Leibbrandt, 2016. "The dynamics of poverty in the first four waves of NIDS," SALDRU Working Papers 174, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    14. Francesco Devicienti & Valentina Gualtieri & Mariacristina Rossi, 2014. "The Persistence Of Income Poverty And Lifestyle Deprivation: Evidence From Italy," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(3), pages 246-278, July.
    15. Janz, Teresa & Augsburg, Britta & Gassmann, Franziska & Nimeh, Zina, 2023. "Leaving no one behind: Urban poverty traps in Sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    16. Finn, Arden & Leibbrandt, Murray, 2013. "The dynamics of poverty in the first three waves of NIDS," SALDRU Working Papers 119, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    17. Oliver Schulte & Julian Mumber & Trung Thanh Nguyen, 2023. "Agricultural commercialisation, asset growth and poverty in rural Vietnam," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 67(3), pages 388-416, July.
    18. Swati Dutta, 2015. "Identifying Single or Multiple Poverty Trap: An Application to Indian Household Panel Data," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 120(1), pages 157-179, January.
    19. Tareq Sadeq & Michel Lubrano, 2018. "The Wall’s Impact in the Occupied West Bank: A Bayesian Approach to Poverty Dynamics Using Repeated Cross-Sections," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-24, May.
    20. Arunachalam, Raj & Shenoy, Ajay, 2017. "Poverty traps, convergence, and the dynamics of household income," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 215-230.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:sajeco:v:90:y:2022:i:2:p:214-242. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.