The issue of income disparity has long plagued South Africa because of the political environment that existed before the country’s 1994 democratic transition. Based on the widely used Gini index, which gauges global inequality, the nation routinely has some of the highest rates of income disparity in the world. Income inequality in South Africa keeps rising even after a number of frameworks and policies have been put in place, which has a big influence on society. Thus, it is essential to comprehend the causes of income disparity and put suitable policies in place to remedy it. The purpose of this study is to look into the relationship between South Africa’s income disparity and its determinants. Using the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) approach, this study empirically examines the effects of government spending on social grants, gross savings, population growth, and economic growth on income inequality from 1975 to 2017. Data on the Gini index are sourced from the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID). Findings reveal a statistically significant negative correlation between government spending on social grants and income inequality. Moreover, income inequality demonstrates a negative relationship with both gross savings and economic growth. However, population growth exhibits a positive correlation with income inequality. This study highlights the significance of implementing a comprehensive strategy to address income inequality in South Africa. This strategy should involve augmenting government expenditure on social grants, cultivating a savings culture within households, and enacting policies that incentivize job creation, particularly in areas with rapid population growth. In addition to making a substantial contribution to the body of evidence already available on income disparity, this study offers insightful information to policymakers working to improve the socioeconomic climate in South Africa.

The Southern African Customs Union (SACU), as a bloc, is compelled to commit to trade in environmentally friendly goods. This study investigated the short-run and long-run relationships between trade openness and environmental quality in the SACU. The Cross-Sectional Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) approach was applied to the data from 1985 to 2023. The results show that the estimated coefficients of trade openness positively and significantly contribute to carbon emissions in the short run and the long run. The results demonstrate that the gains-from-trade hypothesis does not hold in the SACU. Also, the results indicate that foreign direct investment inflow does not significantly contribute to CO₂ emissions; therefore, the pollution haven hypothesis does not hold. The Dumitrescu–Hurlin Granger non-causality test was employed, and the results show that there is bidirectional causality between CO₂ emissions and trade openness, CO₂ emissions and economic growth, and CO₂ emissions and population growth and no directional causality between foreign direct investment and CO₂ emissions. This study recommends that SACU countries should encourage the trade of eco-friendly goods, which is likely to lessen environmental consequences.

Energy efficiency potentially reduces global carbon emissions, whereas the need of emerging countries to maintain economic growth and development entails a sharp increase in energy consumption. However, to meet this, current energy systems need to be transformed. Several studies find different conclusions on the short-run and long-run relationship and the direction of causality, and none of the studies have considered energy efficiency in their model. This study investigates the direction of causality between energy efficiency, energy consumption, and economic growth in South Africa. To determine if a long-run relationship between the variables exists, the Johanson cointegration test is used, and the results indicate that there is a long-run relationship between economic growth, energy depletion, energy efficiency, non-renewable energy consumption, renewable energy consumption, and energy security, with trace statistics suggesting that the null hypothesis of no cointegration should be rejected at a 5% level of significance. The Toda and Yamamoto procedure of the Granger causality approach was then applied. This study finds a unidirectional causality between energy efficiency, non-renewable energy consumption, and economic growth and no causality between renewable energy consumption, energy depletion, energy security, and economic growth. The growth hypothesis is supported, while the neutrality hypothesis is only confirmed regarding renewable energy consumption and economic growth. The results further suggest that a unidirectional Granger causality exists between non-renewable consumption and energy efficiency, and economic growth in South Africa. In South Africa, energy efficiency is a significant tool to enhance sustainable growth and attain climate objectives. Also, energy efficiency helps to lower the costs of mitigating carbon emissions and further advance both social and economic development.