Our official statistics agency published the first findings of its survey of earning and spending by SA households this week. These show a nation that is still highly unequal, on race and gender lines but also on education and geographic lines. But the more striking finding is that the gap has narrowed dramatically over the past two decades. And where race clearly is the divide, which Stats SA tends to focus on, along with gender, it’s clear from the survey that education is now a bigger source of inequality than race. Employment versus unemployment would no doubt have emerged as an even bigger one, had the statistics agency done that breakdown.

This is the first full income and expenditure survey (IES) Stats SA has conducted since 2010/11. It’s based on a survey of more than 19,000 households. The data is used to calculate everything from the weights in the inflation basket to official inequality and poverty ratios. In other words, it goes to the heart of SA’s challenge of ho...

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