IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/intecp/978-1-137-52974-9_8.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Assessing the Impact of Social Grants on Inequality: A South African Case Study

In: Contemporary Issues in Development Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Reinhard Schiel
  • Murray Leibbrandt
  • David Lam

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the role of social grants in reducing income inequality during the first 15 years of democracy in South Africa. Since the transition to democracy in 1994, the South African government has dramatically expanded this system of social grants. Building on an existing but racially biased social security system developed by the apartheid government, the social grant system was expanded to include all races and then, through the 1990s, additional social transfers were instituted.

Suggested Citation

  • Reinhard Schiel & Murray Leibbrandt & David Lam, 2016. "Assessing the Impact of Social Grants on Inequality: A South African Case Study," International Economic Association Series, in: Timothy Besley (ed.), Contemporary Issues in Development Economics, chapter 8, pages 112-135, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-137-52974-9_8
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137529749_8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wan, Guang Hua, 2001. "Changes in regional inequality in rural China: decomposing the Gini index by income sources," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 45(3), pages 1-21.
    2. Shorrocks, A F, 1982. "Inequality Decomposition by Factor Components," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 193-211, January.
    3. Silber, Jacques, 1989. "Factor Components, Population Subgroups and the Computation of the Gini Index of Inequality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(1), pages 107-115, February.
    4. Lerman, Robert I & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1985. "Income Inequality Effects by Income," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(1), pages 151-156, February.
    5. Stark, Oded & Taylor, J Edward & Yitzhaki, Shlomo, 1986. "Remittances and Inequality," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 96(383), pages 722-740, September.
    6. Ingrid Woolard & Murray Leibbrandt, 2010. "The Evolution and Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers in South Africa," SALDRU Working Papers 51, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    7. Azevedo, Joao Pedro & Inchauste, Gabriela & Olivieri, Sergio & Saavedra, Jaime & Winkler, Hernan, 2013. "Is labor income responsible for poverty reduction ? a decomposition approach," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6414, The World Bank.
    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. Margherita Scarlato & Giorgio d'Agostino, 2019. "Cash Transfers, Labor Supply, and Gender Inequality: Evidence from South Africa," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 159-184, October.
    2. Janina Hundenborn & Ingrid Woolard & Murray Leibbrandt, 2016. "Drivers of Inequality in South Africa," SALDRU Working Papers 194, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    3. Janina Hundenborn & Ingrid Woolard & Jon Jellema, 2019. "The effect of top incomes on inequality in South Africa," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 26(5), pages 1018-1047, October.
    4. Nnaeme, Chibuikem C. & Patel, Leila & Plagerson, Sophie, 2020. "How cash transfers enable agency through livelihoods in South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    5. Ingrid Woolard & Janina Hundenborn & Jon Jellema, 2018. "The effect of top incomes on inequality in South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series 90, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

    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. Schiel, Reinhard & Leibbrandt, Murray & Lam, David, 2014. "Assessing the impact of social grants on inequality: A South African case study," WIDER Working Paper Series 160, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Paul, Satya, 2004. "Income sources effects on inequality," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 435-451, February.
    3. Michele Giammatteo, 2007. "The bidimensional decomposition of inequality: A nested Theil approach," LIS Working papers 466, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    4. Koen Caminada & Kees Goudswaard & Chen Wang & Jinxian Wang, 2019. "Income Inequality and Fiscal Redistribution in 31 Countries After the Crisis," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 61(1), pages 119-148, March.
    5. Babulo, Bedru & Muys, Bart & Nega, Fredu & Tollens, Eric & Nyssen, Jan & Deckers, Jozef & Mathijs, Erik, 2009. "The economic contribution of forest resource use to rural livelihoods in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 123-131, March.
    6. Tran, Tuyen & Vu, Huong, 2013. "Farmland loss, nonfarm diversification and inequality: A micro-econometric analysis of household surveys in Vietnam," MPRA Paper 47596, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Janina Hundenborn & Ingrid Woolard & Murray Leibbrandt, 2016. "Drivers of Inequality in South Africa," SALDRU Working Papers 194, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    8. Wang Dewen, 2010. "Can Social Security Boost Domestic Consumption in the People’s Republic of China?," Working Papers id:2490, eSocialSciences.
    9. Stéphane Mussard & Michel Terraza, 2009. "Décompositions des mesures d'inégalité : le cas des coefficients de Gini et d'entropie," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 75(2), pages 151-181.
    10. Kai-yuen, Tsui, 1998. "Factor Decomposition of Chinese Rural Income Inequality: New Methodology, Empirical Findings, and Policy Implications," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 502-528, September.
    11. Cem Baslevent, 2007. "Equalizing and disequalizing income components: how to decide which is which," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 319-321.
    12. Wroński, Marcin, 2023. "The impact of social security wealth on the distribution of wealth in the European Union," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    13. Ivica Urban, 2014. "Contributions of taxes and benefits to vertical and horizontal effects," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 42(3), pages 619-645, March.
    14. Kimhi, Ayal, 2010. "International Remittances, Domestic Remittances, and Income Inequality in the Dominican Republic," Discussion Papers 93130, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Agricultural Economics and Management.
    15. Thomas Reardon & J. Edward Taylor & Kostas Stamoulis & Peter Lanjouw & Arsenio Balisacan, 2000. "Effects of Non‐Farm Employment on Rural Income Inequality in Developing Countries: An Investment Perspective," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(2), pages 266-288, May.
    16. David (David Patrick) Madden & Cathal Clancy, 2005. "Growth and inequality in Ireland : 1987 - 1999," Working Papers 200516, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    17. Alejandro Lopez-Feldman, 2006. "Decomposing inequality and obtaining marginal effects," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 6(1), pages 106-111, March.
    18. Hisatoshi Hoken & Hiroshi Sato, 2017. "Public Policy and Long-Term Trends in Inequality in Rural China, 1988-2013," University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Working Papers 201716, University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP).
    19. Stéphane Mussard, 2006. "La décomposition des mesures d’inégalité en sources de revenu : l’indice de Gini et les généralisations," Cahiers de recherche 06-05, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    20. St鰨ane Mussard & Luc Savard, 2012. "The Gini multi-decomposition and the role of Gini's transvariation: application to partial trade liberalization in the Philippines," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(10), pages 1235-1249, April.

    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:pal:intecp:978-1-137-52974-9_8. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    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.