Publication: Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Date
2019-03
ISSN
Published
2019-03
Author(s)
Bakker, Jan David
Parsons, Christopher
Rauch, Ferdinand
Abstract
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.
Citation
“Bakker, Jan David; Parsons, Christopher; Rauch, Ferdinand. 2019. Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Policy Research working paper,no. WPS 8764;; Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8764. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31358 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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