Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Although Africa has experienced rapid urbanization in recent decades, we know little about the process of urbanization across the continent. The paper exploits a natural experiment, the abolition of South African pass laws, to explore how exogenous...

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Main Authors:	Bakker, Jan David, Parsons, Christopher, Rauch, Ferdinand
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2019
Subjects:	URBANIZATION MIGRATION ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY NATURAL EXPERIMENT BLACK POPULATION SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION CENSUS ABOLITION LABOR MOBILITY
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/825741551797546879/Migration-and-Urbanization-in-Post-Apartheid-South-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31358

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recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-313582022-09-20T00:15:00Z Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa Bakker, Jan David Parsons, Christopher Rauch, Ferdinand URBANIZATION MIGRATION ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY NATURAL EXPERIMENT BLACK POPULATION SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION CENSUS ABOLITION LABOR MOBILITY Although Africa has experienced rapid urbanization in recent decades, we know little about the process of urbanization across the continent. The paper exploits a natural experiment, the abolition of South African pass laws, to explore how exogenous population shocks affect the spatial distribution of economic activity. Under apartheid, black South Africans were severely restricted in their choice of location and many were forced to live in homelands. Following the abolition of apartheid they were free to migrate. Given a migration cost in distance, a town nearer to the homelands will receive a larger inflow of people than a more distant town following the removal of mobility restrictions. Drawing upon this exogenous variation, the authors study the effect of migration on urbanization in South Africa. While they find that on average there is no endogenous adjustment of population location to a positive population shock, there is heterogeneity in these results. Cities that start off larger do grow endogenously in the wake of a migration shock, while rural areas that start off small do not respond in the same way. This heterogeneity indicates that population shocks lead to an increase in urban relative to rural populations. Overall, the evidence suggests that exogenous migration shocks can foster urbanization in the medium run. 2019-03-07T19:45:33Z 2019-03-07T19:45:33Z 2019-03 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/825741551797546879/Migration-and-Urbanization-in-Post-Apartheid-South-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31358 English Policy Research working paper,no. WPS 8764; Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8764 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Africa South Africa
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	URBANIZATION MIGRATION ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY NATURAL EXPERIMENT BLACK POPULATION SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION CENSUS ABOLITION LABOR MOBILITY
spellingShingle	URBANIZATION MIGRATION ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY NATURAL EXPERIMENT BLACK POPULATION SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION CENSUS ABOLITION LABOR MOBILITY Bakker, Jan David Parsons, Christopher Rauch, Ferdinand Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa
geographic_facet	Africa South Africa
relation	Policy Research working paper,no. WPS 8764;
description	Although Africa has experienced rapid urbanization in recent decades, we know little about the process of urbanization across the continent. The paper exploits a natural experiment, the abolition of South African pass laws, to explore how exogenous population shocks affect the spatial distribution of economic activity. Under apartheid, black South Africans were severely restricted in their choice of location and many were forced to live in homelands. Following the abolition of apartheid they were free to migrate. Given a migration cost in distance, a town nearer to the homelands will receive a larger inflow of people than a more distant town following the removal of mobility restrictions. Drawing upon this exogenous variation, the authors study the effect of migration on urbanization in South Africa. While they find that on average there is no endogenous adjustment of population location to a positive population shock, there is heterogeneity in these results. Cities that start off larger do grow endogenously in the wake of a migration shock, while rural areas that start off small do not respond in the same way. This heterogeneity indicates that population shocks lead to an increase in urban relative to rural populations. Overall, the evidence suggests that exogenous migration shocks can foster urbanization in the medium run.
format	Working Paper
author	Bakker, Jan David Parsons, Christopher Rauch, Ferdinand
author_facet	Bakker, Jan David Parsons, Christopher Rauch, Ferdinand
author_sort	Bakker, Jan David
title	Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa
title_short	Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa
title_full	Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa
title_fullStr	Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa
title_full_unstemmed	Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa
title_sort	migration and urbanization in post-apartheid south africa
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2019
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/825741551797546879/Migration-and-Urbanization-in-Post-Apartheid-South-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31358
_version_	1764474144965001216

Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa

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