SALDRU and FES Host Symposium on Social Mobility and Inequality

SALDRU director, Professor Murray Leibbrand opened the discussion with a great presentation on the texture and multidimensionality of inequality. He highlighted that income for the poor in post-apartheid era mostly comes from government grants. "The post-apartheid labour market's not working".

The next presenter was Vimal Ranchhod who talk about how Inequality manifests itself in many ways such as: racial inequality, land inequality, income inequality, power inequality, asset inequality. His presentation was followed by Patrizio Piranio's research on National Income Dynamics. Piranio's research indicated that South Africa does not have a long enough panel data to accurately measure lifetime incomes over generations but using National Income Dynamics Study since 2008, we can begin to measure Intergenerational Mobility.

Speakers included Arainne De Lannoy, Chief research Officer, Macolm Keswell - Research associate, Nicola Branson - Senior Researcher, Ingrid Woolard – Research Associate and Martin Wittenberg professor at School of Economics and Director of Datafirst at the University of Cape Town.

The symposium was held in honour of the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit Founding Director, Professor Francis Wilson.

Click here to read more about the conference and to watch the presentations.