10.07.2023 Miquel Pellicer’s article “Understanding the effect of racial classification in Apartheid South Africa” wins the Francis Wilson Memorial Prize

Miquel Pellicer’s article “Understanding the effect of racial classification in Apartheid South Africa” (co-authored with Vimal Ranchhod) has been awarded the Francis Wilson Memorial Prize. This prize selects the best article in a peer-review journal on development topics focusing on South Africa. The prize honours Francis Wilson, founder of SALDRU and DataFirst, research units at the University of Cape Town that spearhead research into inequality, development, and labor markets  in the African continent. The adjudicatory committee was composed of professors from the University of Notre Dame; Williams College, and the University of Michigan.

The paper “Understanding the effect of racial classification in Apartheid South Africa” seeks to estimate quantitatively and in a rigorous manner the extent of white privilege under Apartheid South Africa. It asks how would the socioeconomic trajectory of a person had differed had that person been classified as white as opposed to non-white? To answer this question, Pellicer and Ranchhod leverage a change in racial classification rules during the 1960s that privileged ancestry over appearance in the process of racial classification. This implied that the chances of being classified as white got reduced for cohorts born after a certain date and they find that, indeed, average income is correspondingly lower for these younger cohorts. They estimate that the mere fact of being classified as white led to no less than a fourfold increase in income.