During 1992 the World Bank approached the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town to coordinate, a study in South Africa called the Project on Statistics for Living standards and Development. This study was carried out during 1993, and consistency of two phases. The first of these was a situation analysis, consisting of a number of regional poverty profiles and cross-cutting studies on a national level. The second phase was a country wide household survey conducted in the latter half of 1993. The Project has been built on the Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty, which assessed the situation up to the mid 1980's.