For a country as concerned about income distribution as South Africa is, there is remarkably little national statistical information on household incomes. There are the national accounts, the 1995 and 2000 Income and Expenditure Surveys and the 1996 and 2001 Population Censuses. These sources have limitations. The national accounts tell us nothing about the size distribution of household incomes. The 2000 Income and Expenditure Survey is flawed. The censuses indicate personal incomes in income classes and in both censuses there are well over two million households reporting no income at all. The purpose of this study is to bring the available information within a common framework, proposing corrections to incomplete or erroneous data, in order to make the best judgement possible about changes in income distribution between 1995 and 2001.