Growth reduced poverty by around nine percentage points. The increase in inequality increased poverty by roughly the same numerical value. Hence, both the growth and the redistribution effects have almost exactly cancelled each other. The headcount in 2005 would have been roughly 10 percentage points lower (from 42% to 33%) had it not been of the increase in inequality. Hence, poverty has changed little in South Africa between 1995 and 2005, but it is not to say that little else has changed: average consumption has increased substantially, but inequality has also risen importantly, and this has cancelled all of the positive poverty effects of growth.