Poor Whites and the Role of the State: The Evidence

Economic Policies for a New South Africa

“…The apartheid system is assumed to have had two main effects on the supply of labor. First, at the premarket level, educational discrimination is as-This estimate suggests a trend consistent with the more detailed analysis of Knight and McGrath (1987) for 1976and 1985 sumed to have distorted the supply of skilled labor and to have restricted the income growth of certain racial groups. Second, at the market level, the effective segmentation of the labor market has allowed white workers to gain an economic rent at the expense of workers in the other racial groups.…”

“…The Carnegie report (1989) documents a 240 percent increase in real terms of black wages in mining and quarrying between 1970 and 1985. 3 One issue that has in the past occupied the attention of the authorities has been the so-called poor white issue (for a survey, see Abedian and Standish (1985)). It will not be discussed here, not least because the South African Government has been attending to it since the 1920s, and white poverty appears to have been largely eradicated.…”

Water as agent for social change, 1900-1939: Two case studies of developmental state approaches in establishing irrigation schemes

“…Workers recruited by the Department of Labour for this work were required to pass a medical test of fitness prior to engagement. 45 In this period of acute crisis the development of a large-scale irrigation network was, for Hertzog's National Party government, with its strong rural Afrikaner support base, a means of keeping whites productive in the rural areas who would probably otherwise have drifted to the towns and aggravated the already chronic unemployment problem in the urban areas as well. 46 Dam construction in the early 1930s can therefore also be regarded as "depression dams" 47 of which the Buchuberg dam serves as poignant example.…”

Market Imperfections and Unemployment: A Model of the South African Labour Market 1900–1940

“…the franchise and being able to exert political pressure on government. Following the recommendation of the 1922 Unemployment Commission and the 1922 Committee of the Heads of Government Departments, conditions in the labour market underwent considerable change over this period (Abedian and Standish, 1985a). Not only was an active campaign of black-white substitution initiated but the government also embarked upon a policy-package for training and educating the poor whites.…”

“…In the market for unskilled whites there was a substantial increase in demand as a result of growing government employment, while there was simultaneously a decreased supply due to the government retraining schemes; whites entering the retraining schemes were equipped with sufficient skills to enter the white skilled market as the return to employers is now equal to or above minimum wage levels (Abedian and Standish, 1985a). Wages paid in these schemes were less than minimum skilled wages but appeared at times to have drawn some unskilled whites off the land and out of private industry.…”