The World Wealth and Income Database has updated South Africa’s profile, providing a clearer picture of the country’s wealth and income inequality between 1960 and 2015.<\/p>\n
The online data sets use national accounts, survey data, fiscal data and wealth rankings, and were created by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and a team of more than 100 researchers from 70 countries, in an effort to illustrate the widening gap between the rich and the poor in large economies.<\/p>\n
The new inequality data showed that top income shares have increased in nearly all countries over the last 60 years in both developing and developed nations alike.<\/p>\n
However, South Africa was revealed as\u00a0one of the countries with one of the worst wealth distribution rates, with the share of wealth held by the top 1% of earners doubling since the late seventies\u00a0– from about 10% then, to almost 20%\u00a0today.<\/p>\n
This graph represents how much South Africa’s top 1% of earners contributed to the total annual income earned in their respective years.<\/p>\n
The graph shows that South Africa’s richest people have increasingly held a bigger and bigger portion of total wealth since the dawn of democracy in the country.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/WID.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\nThis graph represents how much South Africa’s top 10% of earners contributed to the total annual income earned in their respective years.<\/p>\n
As with the graph above, it shows a clear trend of the top 10% of South African earners increasingly hold a majority of the country’s wealth. In this case, it shows that 10% of South Africa’s population holds 65% of the country’s wealth.<\/p>\n