Archive for June 2018
Cities are the future
Photo by Marcia Valle
Brazil is a fascinating country to travel to as a South African. It is vibrant, slightly chaotic and mesmerizing all in one, and, beyond the airports and major tourist areas, quite a challenge for someone with no knowledge of Portuguese. I was invited to a rural university town in the state of Minas Gerais in May to deliver a series of talks. From the airport in Belo Horizonte my driver, hell bent on showing off his Grand Prix skills, took me on a five-hour rollercoaster ride through the hilly countryside. What was formerly a coffee and sugar plantations (and mining) region, were now mostly vacant, most of the land reclaimed by veld and forests. The language barrier prevented me from inquiring in detail what was happening, but from what I could gather, his answer was simple: People are moving to the cities. They want better lives.
Rapid migration to cities is a global phenomenon. People ‘vote with their feet’ for better economic opportunities, and in South Africa, as in Brazil, they vote for the bright lights of the cities. Poverty in South Africa is largely a rural phenomenon. Yes, townships on the periphery of cities house many poor residents, but these residents have better lives than those in the former homelands many of them come from. The search for a better life for them and their children is why they moved in the first place.
Those of us with a romantic view of life in the countryside may think that this flood to the cities can be reversed by, for example, policies that would expand land access or improve rural living standards. But lack of land is not the reason people migrate to cities in large numbers, not in South Africa and also not in Europe, China or Brazil. In several European countries, rural areas have been abandoned, taken over by forests (and returning wildlife). The European policy-makers have done their best to prevent this, by offering expensive agricultural subsidies to its farmers (at the cost of farmers in Latin America, India and Africa), but this has just slowed the inevitable. Farms are now being bought up by rich city-folk that want weekend getaways – cities are what creates wealth, the countryside is for spending it. In China, because of the disastrous policies of Mao, land was equally divided amongst the citizens. Yet with the onset of modern economic growth in China since the 1980s, millions of families have relocated to the cities, first to fill jobs in low-skilled, labour-intensive sectors, but as the economy has grown and wages have increased, to more skill-intensive sectors. Their children will attain much higher living standards than their parents and grandparents could ever dream of. Despite a history of severe inequality, the story is no different in Brazil. Rich and poor move to cities, because that is where their living standards are most likely to improve.
Trying to slow down urbanization is futile; in fact, it is likely to do more harm than good. Cities are where people prosper: they have access to employment opportunities, better schools and clinics, electricity, water and sanitation and access to a greater variety of social institutions and entertainment, like churches and sport clubs. But because cities are so attractive, that also results in higher levels of inequality, as new poor migrants from the countryside continually fill the gaps left by those that were formerly poor but have worked their way up. Inequality in cities should thus be interpreted with caution: it is a consequence, rather than a break, on progress. The poor care less about the Gini coefficient and much more about the possibility of social mobility – the possibility to escape poverty.
Evidence of how migrants’ living standards improve is provided in a new paper by Ivan Turok and Justin Visagie. They track rural migrants to South African cities between 2008 and 2014. Before their move to the city, 80% of these migrants were living below the poverty line. Six years later, they results show, ‘the level of income poverty for these migrants (now living in an urban environment) had more than halved to below 35%. Meanwhile, the poverty level for individuals who remained in the countryside stayed very high at 70%.’
It is for this reason that some economists are proposing a somewhat contentious poverty-alleviating policy: subsidies to help those in rural areas to migrate to cities. A new paper by David Lagakos, Ahmed Mobarak and Michael Waugh use an experimental programme of migration subsidies in Bangladesh to calculate the effect on migrant welfare. They find that for the poorest households, the welfare gains from migration subsidies are higher than unconditional cash transfers or a rural workfare program costing the same total amount. ‘This suggests that conditional migration transfers may be a useful way to raise the welfare of poor rural households in the developing world.’
The influx of migrants are and will continue to be difficult for cities, already suffering backlogs and scarce resources, to manage. But there are ways to support them. National and provincial governments can do more to give cities control over land and infrastructure they own, like Metrorail. Greater private sector involvement can speed the provision of basic services, notably in housing and internet connections. Political competition, like what has happened in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth, will help to push out bureaucratic incompetence (and corruption) and promote service delivery.
Urbanisation is the key to future prosperity, in South Africa, Brazil and elsewhere. Any policy to keep people in rural areas amounts to a policy to keep them poor. While city governments are battling to tackle existing infrastructure backlogs, they should recognise that they offer the best hope for people to escape poverty.
**An edited version of this article originally appeared in the 7 June edition of finweek.
One policy to rule them all
The holy grail for development economists is to identify an affordable policy intervention that will help the poorest escape poverty. We know that living a longer and better life is correlated with many things: higher income from having a job, living in a house with clean water and sanitation, and access to better schools and health facilities, to name a few. But the trouble comes when we try to write policy to improve these things: which investment, given limited resources and political constraints, will most benefit children from poor households? And why?
A new paper* published in the American Economic Review last month by a team of economists and psychologists offers an answer. It uses a longitudinal unconditional cash transfer programme – the Great Smoky Mountains Study in North Carolina – to examine how a cash boost for parents affected children’s outcomes. Children from 11 counties were interviewed annually from age 9 until the age of 16. Their parents were interviewed at the same time. One subsection of these children are American Indians. These American Indian families began to receive, five years after the first survey, direct cash transfers from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians tribal government as a result of a new casino that came into operation. The cash transfers were provided to all adult citizens of the tribe, regardless of their employment conditions, marital status, or the presence of young children. This is basically equivalent to a universal Basic Income Grant, a policy that is gaining popularity in academic circles.
Because the surveys were initially undertaken for the purpose of collecting information about behavioural and mental health, the authors have a lot of information about the children’s emotional and behavioural well-being at their disposal. Most importantly, the surveys began before the introduction of the unconditional cash transfer, so they can compare the mental health conditions of children in households who receive the transfer to those in households who never received it. This ‘natural experiment’ is the closest thing economists get to a laboratory experiment.
The results are remarkable. They show that the increase in unconditional household income improves child personality traits, emotional well-being and behavioural health. Because of the unique nature of their data, they can demonstrate that these improvements are for the same child using the same measures over time. The formation of positive personality traits, like conscientiousness (individuals who do your duties diligently and thoroughly) and agreeableness (individuals who are kind, sympathetic and cooperative), is ‘crucial in determining long-term socioeconomic standing and may also have strong effects on long-term health, educational attainment, and economic outcomes’. We know from earlier research that mental health conditions, such as attention deficit disorder, are more likely to affect poorer children. The authors concur: ‘We find that the children that start out with the most severe personality or behavioral deficits are the ones who exhibit the greatest improvements.’ A universal cash injection, like a Basic Income Grant, is likely to have the largest impact on children from the poorest households, improving personality traits and health outcomes even during their teenage years.
Such improvements in personality will have large repercussions in adulthood. A large literature now shows that such traits are strong predictors of finding a job, living in a good neighbourhood and living a longer and healthier life.
Most remarkably, because the surveys also included questions about parental health, the authors could discuss potential mechanisms through which additional household income affects child personality traits. They find that the unconditional cash transfers resulted in ‘an improvement in parental mental health, the relationship between parents, and the relationship between the parents and children in the treated households’. A Basic Income Grant may improve long-run child outcomes via the improvement in parental behaviors, stress-reduction, and improvements in decision making in the household.
A Big Income Grant is an expensive policy. A back of the envelope calculation reveals that, with 56 million South Africans, a Basic Income Grant of R758 per month – what is classified as the lower-bound poverty line by StatsSA – will require R509.4 billion annually. This is a lot of money, but not impossible to find. We already spend R193.4 million on social protection, and another R66 million on social security. We pay R180 million on debt servicing, which can be drastically reduced if we sell government-owned assets and repay our debt. A Basic Income Grant will also help reduce the reliance on free government services, such as fee-free schools, and increase VAT income as consumption increases.
A Basic Income Grant not only eliminates extreme poverty with the stroke of a pen, but as the Great Smoky Mountains Study show, it can drastically improve the emotional well-being and behavioural health of both children and parents in our poorest communities, with massive implications for their futures and that of South Africa. If we are serious about addressing the stark inequalities in our country, inequalities that ultimately help explain societal challenges like hopelessness, desperation, crime, violence, and even populism, then a Basic Income Grant is a policy we can no longer afford to ignore.
*2018. “How Does Household Income Affect Child Personality Traits and Behaviors?” American Economic Review, 108 (3): 775-827.
**An edited version of this article originally appeared in the 10 May edition of finweek.
The Autshumao and Krotoa International Airport of Cape Town: My letter to ACSA
Renaming of Cape Town International Airport: A proposal
I would hereby like to submit a nomination for Cape Town International Airport’s new name.
Cape Town is an international, cosmopolitan city, a ‘melting pot of cultures’. Many individuals from Cape Town’s rich history deserve to be celebrated in the renaming of Cape Town International Airport. Yet I often find that little attention is given, in place names, traditions, and heritage symbols, to the indigenous inhabitants of the region before the arrival of European settlers in the mid-seventeenth century.
I therefore feel it is appropriate that Cape Town’s international airport should celebrate the people who had lived in the region for several centuries before European arrival, who had contributed to the economic and social development of the Cape, often in subordinate positions of indentured labour, and whose descendants still reside here, now mixed with more recent immigrants from Europe, Asia and Africa, a city that is, indeed, a ‘melting pot of cultures’.
My proposal is therefore to rename Cape Town International Airport to the Autshumao and Krotoa International Airport of Cape Town.
Autshumao was the first inhabitant of South Africa to travel abroad. In 1630, Autshumao was picked up by a British ship – called ‘King Harry’ on board – and travelled to the East. There he learned Dutch and English, and when he returned to the Cape, he would become postmaster on Robben Island. He would also act as the first translator and trader when the Dutch East India Company settlers established a refreshment station in 1652. Autshumao later fell into disfavour as trading partner, and was banned to Robben Island. Nelson Mandela would later call him the ‘first freedom fighter’.
His niece, Krotoa, was a translator in the household of Jan van Riebeeck, the first VOC commander of the Cape. She would marry a Danish surgeon and her progeny would include several South Africans of note, including Paul Kruger, Jan Smuts and FW de Klerk.
Naming Cape Town International Airport the Autshumao and Krotoa International Airport of Cape Town would signal recognition of the first inhabitants of Cape Town, and the ‘melting pot of cultures’ that Cape Town has become.
Kind regards,
Johan Fourie
Land expropriation: learning from the Chinese
The complexity of the debate about land expropriation without compensation can ultimately be summarized into two questions: Should land be expropriated without compensation? And, if so, who should own the expropriated land? While much media attention has focused on the first, with the focus often on how such a policy will scare off foreign investment, it is the answer to the second, ultimately, that will determine the success of any attempt at redress and wealth creation.
The two proponents of a policy of land expropriation without compensation in South Africa – the ANC and the EFF – stand on very different sides with regards to answering the second question: the ANC has made it clear that ownership should be in private hands, while the EFF has forcefully and repeatedly made the case that the state should be the custodian of all land. Their policy would see the state expropriate all private farm land and lease the land ‘equally’ to the people of South Africa. Dali Mpofu, National Chairperson of the EFF and a respected advocate, has defended this stance by referring to China in a 2017 tweet: ‘Chinese land is owned … by the state and it has registered the highest consistent economic growth in the world!’
Mpofu’s example is an interesting one, and worth exploring. Indeed, Chinese economic growth over the last four decades has been a historically unprecedented 8% per year. But Mpofu would do well to note that this growth was not a consequence of agriculture. Between 1990 and 2016, the share of agriculture in GDP has fallen dramatically from 26.5% to 8.5%. This was associated with massive urbanization; in 2016, 57.4% of the total population lived in urban areas, a dramatic increase from 26% in 1990. Far fewer people now live off the land, and those that have moved to the (often new) cities, are remarkably better off.
This is because land is not the valuable commodity it once was in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As a way to empower people, land is probably the least useful asset nowadays, because it requires significant investment in physical and human capital to make it productive. Even then, the most valuable assets today are intangible – skills, intellectual property rights, data. In the twentieth century, agriculture could only thrive with significant state intervention in the form of marketing councils, favourable tariffs and other measures, measures that came at the cost of the South African consumer. In the 21st century economy, living off the land – without significant capital investment – will limit the ability of those that most need access to good education and health services and opportunities for social mobility that are found in cities.
This is even more true if the expropriated land is owned by the state. Let us return to Mpofu’s country of choice: China. Between 1955 and 1957, 96% of China’s 550 million peasants were dispossessed of their private property rights. This was the largest movement from private to communal property rights in history. As Shuo Chen and Xiaohuan Lan show in a 2017 paper published in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, the results of this process of land dispossession was devastating for the peasants, and the Chinese economy. The authors use data of 1600 counties that launched the movement in different years, and find that in the year of the dispossession, the number of cattle declined by 12 to 15%. In total, this was a loss of almost 10 million head of cattle. Why? Because people started killing their own animals to keep the meat and hides as soon as they released that they will lose the property rights to the use of those animals, and they did not trust the state to be able to safeguard what used to be theirs. This loss also affected grain output, which fell by 7%. We now know that Mao was not discouraged by this initial production shock. No, he doubled down. This initial process of land dispossession set the stage for the Great Leap Forward movement of 1958, which led to the worst famine in human history that killed an estimated 30 million people.
China’s process of collectivization should be the example that Mpofu and the EFF leadership study. If they want more evidence of how collectivization collapses an economy, they need look no further than Tanzania’s Ujamaa and Operation Vijiji, a much understudied but enlightening experience. Or ask our Zimbabwean neighbours about their land reform programme. As Tawanda Chingozha, a PhD student in the Department of Economics at Stellenbosch University, shows using sophisticated satellite imaging technology, Zimbabwe’s land reform programme caused a significant reduction in both the quantity and quality of crops harvested, and not only on formerly white commercial farms. The empirical evidence against state-owned land ownership is unequivocal.
Land is an emotive issue because the memories of dispossession, forced removals, and apartheid segregation remain vivid for many. Others are simply unhappy with the slow process of economic progress in the last decade, and see in land a source of safety and security.
But if land is expropriated and private property removed, the hope of economic progress will be nothing more than a mirage. We have smart people in South Africa. Surely we can find a way of redress that actually empowers people – and won’t replicate our disastrous past policies that subjugated the poorest to a life of poverty on the periphery of progress?
*An edited version of this article originally appeared in the 26 April edition of finweek.
Johan Fourie's blog 