The geography of intergenerational mobility in South Africa

This paper examines the geography of intergenerational income mobility in South Africa across districts and metropolitan municipalities as well as historically disadvantaged former-homelands. South Africa’s high inequality has a geographical dimension (spatial inequality), shaped by a long history of spatially implemented discrimination. Consequently, with the degree of disparate development and access to resources, where children grow up in South Africa strongly influences their prospects. Using nationally representative survey data and a two-sample two-stage least squares approach, three complementary mobility measures—intergenerational income elasticity, rank–rank persistence, and absolute upward mobility (p25)—are contrasted. National estimates reveal intergenerational elasticity estimates ranging from 0.552 to 0.623, and rank–rank slopes of between 0.264 and 0.294. However, these averages conceal substantial spatial heterogeneity in intergenerational income mobility across distric