The distribution of incomes in South Africa in 2004, ten years after the transition to democracy, was probably more unequal than it had been under apartheid. In this book, Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass explain why this is so, offering a detailed and comprehensive analysis of inequality in South Africa from the midtwentieth century to the early twenty-first century. They show that the basis of inequality shifted in the last decades of the twentieth century from race to class. Formal deracialization of public policy did not reduce the actual disadvantages experienced by the poor nor the advantages of the rich. The fundamental continuity in patterns of advantage and disadvantage resulted from underlying continuities in public policy, or what Seekings and Nattrass call the “distributional regime.” The post-apartheid distributional regime continues to divide South Africans into insiders and outsiders. The insiders, now increasingly multiracial, enjoy good access to well-paid, skilled jobs; the outsiders lack skills and employment.

This open access book investigates the link between income inequality and socio-economic residential segregation in 24 large urban regions in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. It offers a unique global overview of segregation trends based on case studies by local author teams. The book shows important global trends in segregation, and proposes a Global Segregation Thesis. Rising inequalities lead to rising levels of socio-economic segregation almost everywhere in the world. Levels of inequality and segregation are higher in cities in lower income countries, but the growth in inequality and segregation is faster in cities in high-income countries. This is causing convergence of segregation trends. Professionalisation of the workforce is leading to changing residential patterns. High-income workers are moving to city centres or to attractive coastal areas and gated communities, while poverty is increasingly suburbanising. As a result, the urban geography of inequality changes faster and is more pronounced than changes in segregation levels. Rising levels of inequality and segregation pose huge challenges for the future social sustainability of cities, as cities are no longer places of opportunities for all.

Wide-ranging essays demonstrate how the consequences of inequality extend throughout society and the political economy Despite the transition from apartheid to democracy, South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. Its extremes of wealth and poverty undermine intensifying struggles for a better life for all. The wide-ranging essays in this sixth volume of the New South African Review demonstrate how the consequences of inequality extend throughout society and the political economy, crippling the quest for social justice, polarising the politics, skewing economic outcomes and bringing devastating environmental consequences in their wake. Contributors survey the extent and consequences of inequality across fields as diverse as education, disability, agrarian reform, nuclear geography and small towns, and tackle some of the most difficult social, political and economic issues. How has the quest for greater equality affected progressive political discourse? How has inequality reproduced itself, despite best intentions in social policy, to the detriment of the poor and the historically disadvantaged? How have shifts in mining and the financialisation of the economy reshaped the contours of inequality? How does inequality reach into the daily social life of South Africans, and shape the way in which they interact? How does the extent and shape of inequality in South Africa compare with that of other major countries of the global South which themselves are notorious for their extremes of wealth and poverty? South African extremes of inequality reflect increasing inequality globally, and The Crisis of Inequality will speak to all those general readers, policy makers, researchers and students who are demanding a more equal world.

Growing inequalities in Europe are a major challenge threatening the sustainability of urban communities and the competiveness of European cities. While the levels of socio-economic segregation in European cities are still modest compared to some parts of the world, the poor are increasingly concentrating spatially within capital cities across Europe. An overlooked area of research, this book offers a systematic and representative account of the spatial dimension of rising inequalities in Europe. This book provides rigorous comparative evidence on socio-economic segregation from 13 European cities. Cities include Amsterdam, Athens, Budapest, London, Milan, Madrid, Oslo, Prague, Riga, Stockholm, Tallinn, Vienna and Vilnius. Comparing 2001 and 2011, this multi-factor approach links segregation to four underlying universal structural factors: social inequalities, global city status, welfare regimes and housing systems. Hypothetical segregation levels derived from those factors are compared to actual segregation levels in all cities. Each chapter provides an in-depth and context sensitive discussion of the unique features shaping inequalities and segregation in the case study cities. The main conclusion of the book is that the spatial gap between the poor and the rich is widening in capital cities across Europe, which threatens to harm the social stability of European cities. This book will be a key reference on increasing segregation and will provide valuable insights to students, researchers and policy makers who are interested in the spatial dimension of social inequality in European cities. Chapters 1 and 15 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 3.0 license.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

This book’s point of departure rests on the premises that dimensions of the mainstream inclusive city discourse fail to capture in detail vulnerable clusters of society (being women, children, and the aging), the minority clusters (i.e., the blind, the disabled), and migrants. In addition, it fails to recognize the increase of spatial inequality driven by racial and class differences—a factor that has seen an increase in community violence and protests. The focus on spatial inequality has, for a long time, blind-folded urban authorities to ignore exclusion arising out of the same environments created with a notion of creating inclusivity. Hence this book “collapses spatial walls” as it seeks to uncover the true perspectives of inclusivity in cities beyond spatial dimensions but within social realms. The depth of this book’s enquiry rests on its critical investigation of Southern African cities’ through historical epochs of apartheid and colonialism in the region.

Reflecting a new commitment by American anthropologists to engage in what has been called the anthropology of racism, this book examines racism, class stratification and sexism as they bear on the African-American struggle for social justice, equality and cultural identity in the South.