What do we know?: Professor Servaas van der Berg’s poverty estimates

In an attempt to fill in some of the gaps in knowledge about poverty and inequality trends in South Africa, Professor V.D. Berg and his colleagues have published a stream of papers on the topic. This working paper is an extended search through a handful of papers they have published. The document claims that it would be satisfying to be able to show that the work behind the poverty estimates that have become the received wisdom, has resulted in damage to the poor.

The main findings of the document are:

• the results created by the “Bergs” can be found being cited by the likes of ex-president Mbeki, and by senior officials in the Presidency
• the evidence necessary to prove an allegation that the poor have been harmed by the Bergs’ poor research is extremely difficult, if not impossible to obtain
• however, the information yielded by the poverty monitoring tool the Bergs produced is so coarse that it cannot be used to make anything other than the broadest of generalisations
• the reason for the poor results was the weaknesses of the official data, but the authors’ fault was in not pointing out to readers the weakness of the results they have published
• by failing to specify rigorously the criteria by which success in anti-poverty policy is to be judged, the authors opened the way for the abuse of their results
• still, it may not be too late for stimulating a national debate on what the research numbers represent.