South Africa has about three times as many recipients of social benefits as it has income tax-payers, an extremely high ratio by international standards. After 1994 resources have been rapidly reallocated to black households: while approximately 40% of aggregate social spending was directed to whites and 43% to blacks in the mid-1980s, by the late 1990s fully 80% of total social spending was assigned to blacks and less than 10% to whites. At present, blacks contribute some 50% of total government transfers, while receiving roughly 80%.