The Motivational Structure of Appreciation

On a widely held view in aesthetics, appreciation requires disinterested attention. George Dickie famously criticized a version of this view championed by the aesthetic attitude theorists. I revisit his criticisms and extract an overlooked challenge for accounts that seek to characterize appreciative engagement in terms of distinctive motivation: at minimum, the motivational profile such accounts propose must make a difference to how appreciative episodes unfold over time. I then develop a proposal to meet this challenge by drawing an analogy between how attention is guided in appreciation and how practical action is guided in ‘striving play’—a mode of game play recently foregrounded in the philosophy of games. On the resulting account, appreciation involves an ‘inverted’ motivational structure: the appreciating agent's attention is guided by cognitive goals taken up instrumentally, for the sake of the cognitive activity that results from attending under the guidance of those goals

Fiscal incidence of social spending in South Africa, 2006

This paper presents the findings of a study undertaken for the South African National Treasury regarding the expenditure incidence of social spending in South Africa in 2006, and also regarding changes in incidence in the period following democratisation. Concentration ratios and concentration curves show that there have been considerable shifts in social spending incidence in the period 1995 (the year after democracy) and 2006, the most recent observation. In particular, social spending grants have become a major tool of targeting resources to the poor. Although the poor now get considerably more of social spending than their population share, the very skew underlying income distribution means that the post-fiscal situation still is one with great inequality. Moreover, evidence is presented that spending efficiency for social spending is low, thus there is only a tenuous link between social spending and social outcomes. Thus great shifts in social spending have had a limited impact on poverty and inequality in South Africa.Fiscal incidence, Social spending, Poverty, Inequality, South Africa

Current poverty and income distribution in the context of South African history

This paper describes and analyses current poverty and income distribution in South Africa, with a central concern the relationship between poverty, inequality and growth. The paper also investigates patterns of and trends in poverty and income distribution, a literature with a long and distinguished history. Drawing from recent literature in this regard, the paper shows that the labour market – rather than access to wealth or to political and fiscal power – currently sets the limits to redistribution. Wage inequality, deeply rooted in South Africa’s history, plays a central role in overall income distribution, and patterns of human capital development are fundamental to the future growth path and therefore to poverty and income distribution. The paper therefore concludes that reducing inequality substantially is currently unlikely without a massive increase in the human capital of those presently poor, but that prospects in this regard are inauspicious.South Africa, poverty, income distribution, labour market

Issues in South African Social Security

This paper, originally written at the time of the political transition, provides an overview of social security issues at that time. A sustained improvement in the living standards of the poor requires economic growth and investment in human capital to allow the poor to benefit from that growth, but a social safety net is also necessary for those who do not yet share in those benefits and to safeguard those who do against contingencies such as unemployment, old age and illness. In South African, too little attention was paid by social scientists to social security issues before the political transition, with regard to both social assistance and social (occupational) insurance and the link between them.social security, South Africa

Revisiting Goodman

this is a forthcoming article in www.sajp.za.netNelson Goodman’s attempt to analyse the expressiveness of artworks in semantic terms has been widely criticised. In this paper I try to show how the use of an adapted version of his concept of exemplification, as proposed by Mark Textor, can help to alleviate the worst problems with his theory of expression. More particularly I argue that the recognition of an intention, which is central to Textor’s account of exemplification, is also fundamental to our understanding of expressiveness in art. Moreover I propose that the recognition of this intention depends on our interpretation of the artwork – an insight Goodman tried to capture with his assertion that our attributions of expressive properties to artworks function metaphorically. The realisation of the context-dependence of our expressive judgements about art and, hence, of the central role interpretation plays in these judgements, I contend, counts in favour of theories of expression like Goodman’s that focus on semantic concerns.PreprintCopyright of published material is held by the Philosophical Society of South Africa. Authors are permitted to self-archive post-prints of their papers in Open Access archives and/or on personal and/or institutional web pages

The demand for health care in South Africa

Supply-side solutions to health-care provision dominate the South African debate about health care. These solutions are often premised on views that health resources are too concentrated in the private health sector – which supposedly serves only a small minority of the population – and thus public sector provision needs to be expanded. We argue that this rests on a lack of understanding of the nature of the demand for health services. This paper estimates the determinants of the demand for health care using a multinomial logit estimation. It is found that three categories of factors influence the demand for health care. Firstly, demographic and locational variables are significant (e.g. income group, race and where the respondent lives). Secondly, the characteristics of the care provided are important (e.g. cost and distance from the respondent). Finally, the characteristics of the illness (such as its severity) are important. Overall, private health care plays a surprisingly large role in the health care decisions of all South Africans – even poor respondents reveal a clear preference for private health care, despite constraints of money and access. This dominance of the demand for private health care is likely to increase with rising incomes, or if all health services were to receive a similar subsidy (e.g. from mooted medical insurance-type schemes). On a policy level, this would indicate that greater attention should perhaps be given to health demand in considering policy alternatives.health care, South Africa

When the remedy is worse than the disease: Adjusting survey income data for price differentials, with special reference to Mozambique

In using survey data for money metric analysis of poverty and well-being, it is customary to adjust either the data or the poverty line for spatial prices differentials where data exist to make such adjustment. In developing countries where recorded price differentials between regions or provinces are large, using the remedy of adjusting for price differentials may sometimes lead to very wrong conclusions about the spatial distribution of poverty. This may have severe consequences for policy and may be detrimental to the poor. The paper deals with a specific situation, that of Mozambique, where large price differentials are said to exist between the capital (Maputo City) on the one hand, and the rest of the country. Official data that adjust for this may heavily over-estimate poverty in Maputo City, with consequences for the targeting of poverty. We use an asset index based on Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to show that the spatial poverty profile derived from the price-adjusted income data exaggerates poverty in Maputo City, and undertake further empirical analysis to show that not adjusting for the estimated spatial price differentials may have given more reliable estimates of well-being, judging by asset holdings.Mozambique, poverty, prices differentials, multiple correspondence analysis

Changing Patterns of South African income distribution: Towards time series estimates of distribution and poverty

Research on income distribution in South Africa has, for obvious reasons, focused on inter-racial (inter-group) income distribution. Quite dramatic changes have occurred in inter-racial income distribution patterns since the 1970s, with the black share of income rising for the first time and at times exceeding the rise in their population share. This implies a narrowing inter-racial income gap. Data on income distribution remain scarce, so that it remains difficult to obtain the full picture about changes in income distribution. In particular, widening inequality within the black population has received much attention. Rises in black unemployment and in black wages have had inequality-inducing effects on black incomes. Is maldistribution of income between races now making way for maldistribution of income within race groups? Put differently, is inequality shifting from inter-group to intra-group inequality (from between group to within group inequality)? This paper pieces together information from various sources of data (censuses, household surveys, marketing surveys, published wage data series, etc.) to inform estimates of inter- and intra-group distribution over a longer time frame, in an effort to improve analysis of income inequality and poverty trends. These income distribution patterns also have considerable implications for the growth and evolution of the South African consumer market.income distribution, South Africa, time series, poverty

Earnings functions, labour market discrimination and quality of education in South Africa

Education is a key determinant of earnings, as several South African studies have confirmed. Years of schooling completed, however, provides an imperfect approximation of the effective level of education achieved, mainly due to variations in the quality of education received. This study addresses this issue by, for the first time in South Africa, incorporating quality of education in the modelling of earnings. Differences in quality of education are viewed as a form of pre-labour market discrimination. By decomposing the wage gap before and after controlling for educational quality, more accurate estimates of the true levels of labour market discrimination are obtained. The main hypothesis tested is that controlling for quality will reduce the component of the wage gap ascribed to labour market discrimination. The results show a systematic decrease in the labour market discrimination component with increased adjustments for quality of education. Almost half of the previous labour market discrimination can be explained by differences in quality, yet the proportion of racial wage differentials ascribed to labour market discrimination is still found to be significant. The clear implication is that current estimates of labour market discrimination are exaggerated and a more careful analysis of earnings is required to re-assess the levels of discrimination in the South African labour market.earnings functions, labour market, discrimination, education, South Africa

Consumption patterns and the black middle class: The role of assets

Black consumption patterns differ from those of whites, even when considering income levels and household size. This applies particularly to the black middle class, the subject of intense public interest. This paper postulates that this difference results not from cultural differences in taste for middle class goods, but from an asset deficit experienced by blacks. We test this hypothesis using regression analysis based on the 2000 Income and Expenditure Survey. Once assets are considered, consumption of middle class goods by blacks even exceeds those of whites. One would then expect blacks to exhibit, compared to whites, (i) an asset deficit, (ii) an asset preference in purchases (to reduce the deficit), and (iii) a lag in consuming other middle class goods (if the asset deficit is not considered). Descriptive evidence, mainly graphical, from the All Media and Products Survey (AMPS) of 2004 provides support for the main hypothesis. This implies that, for black accruals to the middle class, a stage of asset accumulation would precede a stage of middle class consumption. But once assets have been acquired, the shift in consumption may be quite rapid. There may therefore remain two distinct groups of black middle class consumers: The established middle class (currently still quite small), who have accumulated assets and whose consumption patterns therefore would resemble those of whites; and the new middle class, who may prefer spending to acquire assets.Market definition, Delineation, Quantitative, Stationarity tests, Prices, Geographic, SSNIP, Hypothetical monopolist, Competition, Unit root, Price ratio, Antitrust