The lived experience of inequality in post-apartheid South Africa : measuring exposure to socio-economic inequality at small area level

South Africa has undergone a remarkable political transformation since the birth of democracy in 1994, yet it remains plagued by extremely high levels of socio-economic inequality, violent crime and social unrest. Although inequality is often regarded as a major driver of many social problems, the evidence base concerning inequality in South Africa is relatively limited, consisting primarily of national level Gini coefficients or General Entropy measures based upon household income, expenditure or consumption data. In this thesis I argue that these broad national level measures say little about people's actual day-to-day lived experiences of inequality and how these individual experiences of inequality may be shaped by the local geographical areas in which people live and go about their daily lives. I construct a series of empirical measures of exposure to socio-economic inequality which reflect the socio-spatial environments in which people live. I argue that these new measures can be used as explanatory factors in the study of other social outcomes, both at an individual level (for example, individuals' attitudes) and at an area level (for example, rates of violent crime). Exposure to inequality is measured both from the perspective of the 'poor' population and the perspective of the 'non-poor' population and the measures are constructed and presented at small area level using the Datazone statistical geography. I analyse the spatial distribution of exposure to inequality and find that exposure to inequality is typically highest in urban neighbourhoods, particularly in the major metropolitan areas. I develop a measure of intensity of exposure in order to highlight areas with both high exposure and high levels of deprivation. I also present one example of how my new measures can be used to explore associations with other outcomes, specifically looking at the relationship between people's lived experience of inequality and their attitudes towards inequality and redress.