Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa

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dc.creatorBakker, Jan David
dc.creatorParsons, Christopher
dc.creatorRauch, Ferdinand
dc.date2019-03-07T19:45:33Z
dc.date2019-03-07T19:45:33Z
dc.date2019-03
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-01T00:41:35Z
dc.descriptionAlthough 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.
dc.formatapplication/pdf
dc.formattext/plain
dc.identifierhttp://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/825741551797546879/Migration-and-Urbanization-in-Post-Apartheid-South-Africa
dc.identifierhttps://hdl.handle.net/10986/31358
dc.identifier10.1596/1813-9450-8764
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/123456789/409274
dc.languageEnglish
dc.publisherWorld Bank, Washington, DC
dc.relationPolicy Research working paper,no. WPS 8764;
dc.relationPolicy Research Working Paper;No. 8764
dc.rightsCC BY 3.0 IGO
dc.rightshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo
dc.rightsWorld Bank
dc.subjectURBANIZATION
dc.subjectMIGRATION
dc.subjectECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
dc.subjectNATURAL EXPERIMENT
dc.subjectBLACK POPULATION
dc.subjectSPATIAL DISTRIBUTION
dc.subjectCENSUS
dc.subjectABOLITION
dc.subjectLABOR MOBILITY
dc.titleMigration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa
dc.typeWorking Paper
dc.typeDocument de travail
dc.typeDocumento de trabajo

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