How much income mobility was there in South Africa between 2008 and 2012? Did this mobility serve to equalise or disequalise longer-term measures of income? In this paper we address the first question by assessing the extent of absolute and relative economic mobility. We then turn our attention to the second question of the joint relationship between mobility and inequality, and implement a new measure that is designed to reveal just how equalising or disequalising mobility has been. We find that there was a lot of absolute and relative mobility in the period covered by the first three waves of NIDS, and that this mobility served to equalise longer-term incomes slightly.

Arden Finn, Doctoral student and researcher at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Unit, University of Cape Town Murray Leibbrandt, Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town and the Director of SALDRU. Holder of the DSD/NRF National Research Chair of Poverty and Inequality Research. Principal Investigator on the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), and Pro Vice-Chancellor of Poverty and Inequality at UCT.