While the world has seen a decline in absolute poverty, it has also seen a simultaneous rise in economic inequality. This is the case in all of the major economies as well as in emerging ones, including South Africa. Is there a South African explanation of poverty and inequality that is distinctive and different from an explanation of poverty and inequality that would be used in other contexts and countries? What are the familiar constants that characterise the interdependence of this ubiquitous pairing? How can the discussion on poverty and inequality be taken forward? Is wealth taxation a viable instrument to reduce wealth inequality in South Africa? In Poverty and Inequality: Diagnosis, Prognosis and Responses, the authors explore these and many others gritty questions as they analyse the complexity of poverty and inequality beyond an over-determination of the concepts by the economic or the wealth index in South Africa.

It is generally accepted that the gap between the earnings of unskilled and semi-skilled workers on the one hand, and skilled and highly skilled workers, on the other, narrowed in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. This paper investigates whether the gap between the real earnings of highly skilled and low-skilled workers in the formal sector of the South African economy continued to narrow after this country's transition to democracy. Statistics South Africa's October Household Survey and Labour Force Survey data covering the period 1995 to 2003 are analysed, and the authors also assess changes in the earnings gap between whites and other race groups in that period, and between men and women.