​​Prof Ingrid Woolard, Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, delivered her inaugural lecture entitled Mind the gap: Income inequality in post-apartheid South Africa on 7 August 2019.

Woolard, who is also a professor in the Department of Economics, painted a picture of the changing pattern of income inequality in South Africa since the dawn of democracy, and the key drivers of this inequality.

Based on a body of work spanning the last 25 years, Woolard pointed out that although poverty has fallen since 1993, inequality has not changed very much over the same period.

“The poorest 40% of people accrue about 6% of total income, while the richest 10% of people are earning about 57% of income. This shows a very stark picture of income inequality," she said.

She highlighted the roles that fiscal policy – personal income taxes, cash transfers, education and health spending – have in reducing income inequality.

Woolard said questions remain about the roles and importance of assets and wealth in perpetuating the high levels of inequality, as well as why the South African labour market continues to display such extraordinary levels of unemployment.

“This requires a better grasp of the demand for labour, in conjunction with more sophisticated understanding of market structure and market power," she said.

According to Woolard the trends in inequality are related to deep-rooted factors that change slowly.  These deep drivers of inequality include strong path dependency, enduring social stratification that creates persistent group-based inequalities, deep-seated norms and preferences regarding redistribution, the particular role of social movements within a specific context, the strong link between economic and political inequality, and demographic dynamics with large inequality implications.

“These are topics which economists are inadequately trained to investigate, let alone address.   Making progress on inequality reduction requires much greater collaborative efforts with colleagues from other disciplines – historians, political scientists, lawyers, demographers and sociologists," she concluded.

Woolard's areas of research interest include the measurement of poverty and inequality, unemployment, social protection and fiscal policy. She is a research affiliate at the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, the Institute for the Study of Labour and the Commitment to Equity Institute, and an honorary professor at the University of Cape Town.

From 2008 to 2014, she served on the Employment Conditions Commission, which advises the South African Minister of Labour on making sectoral determinations concerning working conditions and minimum wages in sectors where collective bargaining is weak.

She served on the Davis Tax Committee from 2013 to 2018.

• To see a video of the inaugural lecture, click here​.
• Photo by Anton Jordaan: F.l.t.r. are Prof Nico Koopman, Vice-Rector: Social Impact, Transformation and Personnel; Prof Ingrid Woolard, Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences; and Prof Stan du Plessis, Chief Operating Officer of Stellenbosch University.