The inefficiency of the Gini coefficient - The Mail & Guardian

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COMMENT: To simplify complex inequality into a single statistic doesn’t address how to accurately assess (or reduce) South Africa’s large wealth divide

South Africa’s poor Gini coefficient rating is often cited as justification for many of the ANC’s, and hence government’s policies, designed to address income and wealth inequality. Even thereferences the Gini coefficient as a basis for considering a wealth tax, although it ultimately rejects this option .

This coefficient can be used to measure the degree of inequality of any spread of information, such as wealth, income, weight, height, et cetera, but it has become widely known for its measurement of the distribution of income among individuals or households within an economy. Secondly, those countries that provided data to the World Bank did so over a period from 1992 to 2018. South Africa’s data was last submitted in 2015. How is it possible to draw any definitive conclusions that South Africa is, and remains, “the most unequal society” based on such information? Even the latest World Bank reports no longer refer to South Africa in such absolute terms.

Finally, the Gini coefficient does not address what the wealthy do with their disproportionate share of wealth and income. Far from stuffing it in a mattress, wealth and earnings find their way back into the economy through the purchase of goods and services and investment into new businesses to generate more wealth.

 

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