fourie&krugell the spatial persistence of south africa
DESCRIPTION
Johan Fourie has captured the 1911 South African Census electronically and this allows us to have a look at population and literacy at the level of towns and compare it to modern 1996 and 2011 data.TRANSCRIPT
THE SPATIAL PERSISTENCE OF SOUTH AFRICABy Johan Fourie & Waldo Krugell
Presentation prepared for the ERSA
Economic History Workshop 10:
A country of migrants
Potchefstroom, 4-5 December 2013
Introduction• Why study geographical economics in South Africa?• It could be part of the bigger debates on the roots of
development.• SA has a unique history and spatial distribution of
economic activity.• Today local authorities have some responsibility for
development of their areas.• The local academic literature is made up of divergent contributions from urban and regional planners, geographers and economists.
• In this paper we are interested in the persistence of towns and cities.
• We compare place-level data from 1911, 1996 and 2011.
Development has dimensions of density and distance.• The stylized facts show:
• Economic production is concentrated.• Living standards diverge before converging.• Agglomeration forces shape the spatial economy.• People migrate to profit from proximity to density.• As transport costs fall, specialisation and trade
increases.
• Cities facilitate scale economies of all typeso Sharing, for urbanisation o Matching, or localisationo Learning economies
Our data• We have data at the level of cities and towns.• From the 1911 census:
• Population numbers for whites, other and a total• Numbers of the population that could read and write and those that
could only read, for whites, others and a total.
• We can match the 1911 towns to the 1996 magisterial districts.• We have 1996 data from Global Insight's Regional Economic
Explorer (REX) database.• And population data from the 2011 census, matched to the 1996
boundaries (thanks to David Wilson).
The matching• There are still some issues with the matching to keep in
mind.• There are 199 matched places.• But we have 155 more towns in the REX that are not matched to
places in the 1911 census.• This because the 1996 magisterial districts are more
disaggregated.• For example, the census has Zoutpansberg as one region, but by 1996
this big region is made up of a number of magisterial districts.• It would be relatively easy to aggregate the 1996 magisterial district data
up to the 1911 census regions.• Breaking down the 1911 census regions to the 1996 magisterial districts
would be much more complicated.
Population compared
1911 2011
The rank-size rule• Using the population data one can estimate the rank-size
rule.• The Rank-Size distribution of cities throughout the world follows a
law that states that the number of cities with a population larger than S is approximately proportional to S-q (Gabaix, 1999).
• If q is equal to zero, all places have the same size.• If q is equal to or close to 1 it is also known as “Zipf’s Law”.
1911 2011
ln(S) = 13.318 – 0.738 ln(N)se=0.02
ln(S) = 16.079 – 1.155 ln(N)se=0.02
R2 = 0.879 R2 = 0.805
The rank-size rule
1911 2011
The rank size rule• Thus, in 1911 South Africa's towns were too small and
even in size.• They were likely to offer urbanisation economies rather
than localisation economies.• Population growth, migration, industrialisation lead to an
increase in q as agglomerations (PTA, JHB, PE, DBN, CTN, BFN) grew.
• This is similar to the result that Brakman et al. (1999) found for the Netherlands over the years 1600, 1900 and 1990.
Was there cumulative causation?
Top 20 biggest growth in share of the population
Inanda BloemfonteinPort Elizabeth East LondonPretoria HlabisaPietermaritzburg MtunziniDurban CamperdownRustenburg UitenhagePinetown NqutuLower Umfolozi GeorgeMmabatho UmtataNewcastle Gordonia
Is there anything interesting in the literacy data?
All places
Maximum MeanStd.
DeviationTotal read & write literacy rate 1911 63.45 26.0166 16.11944
Read & write literacy rate, males 1911 36.73 13.5130 8.52490
Read & write literacy rate, females 1911 29.69 12.5036 7.78567
Read & write literacy rate, Whites 1911 46.10 19.1985 14.57181
Read & write literacy rate, Other 1911 23.41 6.8181 4.91797
Top 20 places literacy rates
Simonstown 63.45
Cape 57.74Port Elizabeth 57.16Bredasdorp 57.02Caledon 55.79Ladismith 51.88Piquetberg 51.19Mossel Bay 50.49Riversdale 50.24Swellendam 49.7Pietermaritzburg 48.85Robertson 48.47Johannesburg 48.23Stellenbosch 47.88Laingsburg 47.69Carnarvon 46.5Paarl 46.36Fraserburg 46.17Durban 46.1Sutherland 45.98
Literacy for the "Other" groupingTop 20 places literacy for "Other"
Victoria East 23.41Nqamakwe 22.67Xalanga 21.32Tsomo 20.91Port Elizabeth 19.98Butterworth 18.62Thaba'Nechu 18.36Cape 18.34Kimberley 18.23Tulbagh 17.45Stellenbosch 17.36Simonstown 17.34Fort Beaufort 17.34Stutterheim 17.32Bredasdorp 16.34Namaqualand 15.12Peddie 15.1Paarl 15.05Caledon 14.94Queenstown 14.92
Some correlations
Total population in
1911
Total read & write literacy
rate 1911
Other read & write literacy
rate 1911
Total population
1996 HDI 1996
Gini coefficient
1996
Annual per capita
income in 1996
Total population in 1911 1
Total read & write literacy rate 1911 -0.129 1
Other read & write literacy rate 1911 0.034 .452** 1 Total population 1996 .476** -0.0982 0.081 1
HDI 1996 .383** .615** .396** .347** 1 Gini coefficient 1996 -.245** -0.060 -.298** -.382** -.359** 1 Annual per capita income in 1996 .485** .503** .252** .381** .896** -.285** 1
The way forward• We need to capture more of the 1911 census data.• We need to improve the match with the 1996 district
council boundaries and extend it to 2011 municipal boundaries.
• We need to have a closer look at the history literature to see what questions we can answer.