ABSTRACT
In South Africa, a basic income grant (BIG) involves an extension of the welfare system rather than an entirely novel innovation. The poverty persists due to unemployment and the absence of any real subsistence agriculture—both products of public policy under apartheid—and there is little prospect of reducing poverty through job creation or land reform in the short- or even medium-term. Inequality, under and after apartheid, has been shaped profoundly by a mix of labor market and welfare policies, as well as other policies shaping the economic "growth path"; that is the character as well as the overall rate of economic growth. The welfare system provides generous assistance to old-age pensioners and limited assistance to single parents, but none to the many poor whose poverty is the result of unemployment rather than age. Most of the proponents of a BIG point to the immediate poverty-reducing effects that direct monetary transfers would have on the poor.
