Int. J. Sustainable Economy, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2020 117 Copyright © 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Wealth inequality and entrepreneurial activity in South Africa Boris Urban Graduate School of Business Administration (WBS), University of the Witwatersrand, 2 St. David’s Place, Parktown, Johannesburg, 2193, P.O. Box 98, Wits, 2050, South Africa Email: boris.urban@wits.ac.za Abstract: The article investigates the relationship between wealth inequality and entrepreneurial activity. It is widely recognised that South Africa’s main sustainability issues remain it’s extremely high inequality. Within the framework of sustainable development lies sustainable enterprise development where entrepreneurship has been shown to contribute considerably to sustainability through job creation, economic growth and more equal income distribution. The study relies on panel data, namely the South African National Income Dynamics Study to formally test the study hypotheses. Results indicate that increased wealth inequality is not significantly increasing entrepreneurship activity in South Africa. However there is a positive and significant relationship between wealth inequality and entrepreneurship for those at the bottom of the wealth distribution. The study makes an important contribution by highlighting that public policy aimed at increasing entrepreneurship while decreasing inequality may not be entirely consistent, given the complex relationship between wealth inequality and entrepreneurial activity. Keywords: inequality; entrepreneurship; wealth; sustainability; South Africa; self-employment. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Urban, B. (2020) ‘Wealth inequality and entrepreneurial activity in South Africa’, Int. J. Sustainable Economy, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp.117–139. Biographical notes: Boris Urban was the inaugural Chair in Entrepreneurship at Wits and has more than 30 years of academic and professional experience. Based on more than 100 articles in academic journals, his work is well recognised in the field. He is rated and a highly cited researcher based on Web of Science (ISI journals) rankings (2013 to 2017). He has published in journals such as the Journal of Technology Transfer, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, International Journal of Emerging Markets, and International Journal of HRM. 1 Introduction Considering that sustainability is concerned with the “ability to meet today’s needs and not disturb the future generation’s ability to meet their needs” (Sheehan et al., 2014), inequality remains a major issue in achieving sustainability goals (Urban and George, 2018). Inequality in income, wealth, consumption and opportunity tends to have many