Since the inception of the post-apartheid dispensation in the early 1990s, poverty alleviation has come to represent an increasingly significant developmental concern in South Africa. This
mirrors the international poverty agenda that gained momentum with the publication of the World Development Report 1990 and that has come to characterise the nineties. A concomitant response has been a reconfiguration of the contours of poverty research in South Africa, one that reflects this commitment to understanding the nature and causes of impoverishment and formulating appropriate policy interventions.

A critical milestone in this new poverty research agenda occurred in late 1993 with the Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (PSLSD) under the auspices of the South
African Labour and Development Research Unit (Saldru). This study was the first fully representative household income and living standards survey in South Africa, incorporating
approximately 8800 households nation-wide (of which 4259 were rural African households), and is generally considered the benchmark for comprehensive poverty-related data in the country.