Social mobility during South Africa’s industrial take-off
Stellenbosch Working Paper Series No. WP04/2017Publication date: May 2017
Author(s):
[protected email address] (Department of Economics, Stellenbosch University)
In the absence of historical income or education data, the change in occupations over time can be used as a measure of social mobility. This paper investigates intergenerational occupational mobility using a novel genealogical dataset for settler South Africa, spanning its transition from an agricultural to an early industrialized society (1800–1909). We identify fathers and sons for whom we have complete information on occupational attainment. We follow a two-generation discrete approach to measure changes in both absolute and relative mobility over time. Consistent with qualitative evidence of a shift away from agriculture as the economy’s dominant sector, we see the farming class shrinking and the skilled and professional classes growing. Controlling for changes in the structure of the labor market over time, we find increasing social mobility, becoming significant after the discovery of minerals in 1868. We find this mobility particularly for semi-skilled workers but virtually no improved mobility for sons of farmers. We also test hypotheses related to the mobility prospects for first-born sons and sons of immigrants.
JEL Classification:J60, J61, J62, N30, N37
Keywords:Intergenerational mobility, social mobility, resource curse, industrialization, colonialism, longitudinal data
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Monday 21 July 202512:00-13:00
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Topic: "Diverging fiscal policies and what it means for markets"
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27 Jun 2025 Another setback for the GNU, but oil markets breathe a little easierThis week was marked by heightened tensions both domestically and internationally. At home, friction intensified between the two largest parties in the Government of National Unity (GNU), the ANC and the DA, following the firing of one of the DA's deputy ministers. Internationally, the US conducted airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities using...
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