Murray Leibbrandt, a professor in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town, will present, “Snakes and Ladders and Loaded Dice: Poverty Dynamics and Inequality in South Africa between 2008-2017.” This paper shows that the risk of falling into (deeper) poverty and the chances of moving up looms large in the economic lives of both the poor and the non-poor in South Africa. The paper uses five waves of available National Income Dynamics Study data to provide a thorough and up-to-date analysis of poverty dynamics in South Africa between 2008 and 2017. This analysis investigates how multidimensional inequalities in terms of household- and individual-level characteristics relate to both poverty persistence and vulnerability to poverty.
Murray Leibbrandt is the director of the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit and the director of African Centre of Excellence for Inequalities Research. He is also on the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association and is a senior research fellow of WIDER and the IZA.
The Stone Center hosts a seminar series focused on inequality. The purpose of this series is to give researchers opportunities to present new work to enable intensive discussion and feedback.