Causes and consequences of inequality - African long-term trends

While Reduced inequality is stated by the UN as SDG 10, inequality between and within countries are growing. Academics and policymakers alike struggle to identify the drivers and mechanisms behind this development.

It is particularly challenging for Africa which contains the largest inter-regional inequality differences and some of the world’s most unequal countries.While long-term perspectives have become central for the inequality analysis, consistent pre-1960s data for Africa is largely missing and scattered.

Hence, the African experience stays absent in the debate on global long-term inequality. Our aim is to address this gap.

We apply the social tables approach which allows us to divide up whole populations into income groups, or social classes, estimate average income and size of each class, and calculate between group inequality.We work in parallel to deliver four unique and novel contributions with a broad relevance for inequality research: 1) New social tables for five Southern Africa colonial economies ca 1920-1960. 2) Improved best practice for the social tables approach. 3) Comparative studies to advance inductive theory building. 4) A publicly available database containing our inequality measures.Together, these contributions help us and other researshers study, understand, and explain Africa’s heterogenous inequality landscape, historically and today.

For decades there has been an interest in Africa’s economic development, now we ask whose Africa is rising?