Private Wealth in a Developing Country:Evidence from South Africa

The point of departure of Piketty's influential Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) was the dramatic growth of private wealth-income ratios in advanced economies between 1970 and 2010. Using official balance sheet data for South Africa-the first country to publish such data in the developing world-, this paper examines to what extent this re-emergence of private wealth was also experienced in the developing-country context. First, we find that the South African current wealth-income ratio is very close to its 1975 level, and much lower than those of Piketty's sample of advanced economies. Second, we show that the discrepancy is explained not only by South Africa's relatively low savings rates, but also by the reduction of wealth before and during the transition to democracy in the 1990s. Since then, private wealth recovered significantly, but the U-shaped relationship does not support the argument that there is a clear correlation between the capital-income ratio and capital share.