IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2019-102.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Will urbanization raise social mobility in the South, replicating the economic history of the West?

Author

Listed:
  • Emily Rains
  • Anirudh Krishna

Abstract

As developing countries rapidly urbanize, the number of people living in 'slums'—neighbourhoods lacking property rights and basic services—continues to increase. Whether slum residents will ultimately share in the benefits of the cities they help build or will remain trapped in poverty is not well understood. We review empirical evidence on the potential for social mobility in today's urban slums in order to assess prospects for upward mobility in cities of the Global South.

Suggested Citation

  • Emily Rains & Anirudh Krishna, 2019. "Will urbanization raise social mobility in the South, replicating the economic history of the West?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-102, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2019-102
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp-2019-102.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David H. Autor & David Dorn, 2013. "The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(5), pages 1553-1597, August.
    2. Nardinelli, Clark, 1980. "Child Labor and the Factory Acts," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(4), pages 739-755, December.
    3. Amsden, Alice H, 1991. "Diffusion of Development: The Late-Industrializing Model and Greater East Asia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 282-286, May.
    4. Anirudh Krishna, 2013. "Stuck in Place: Investigating Social Mobility in 14 Bangalore Slums," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(7), pages 1010-1028, July.
    5. Fox, Sean, 2014. "The Political Economy of Slums: Theory and Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 191-203.
    6. Benjamin Marx & Thomas Stoker & Tavneet Suri, 2013. "The Economics of Slums in the Developing World," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(4), pages 187-210, Fall.
    7. Christopher Blattman & Stefan Dercon, 2018. "The Impacts of Industrial and Entrepreneurial Work on Income and Health: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 1-38, July.
    8. Ivan Turok & Jackie Borel-Saladin, 2018. "The theory and reality of urban slums: Pathways-out-of-poverty or cul-de-sacs?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(4), pages 767-789, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rains, Emily & Krishna, Anirudh, 2020. "Precarious gains: Social mobility and volatility in urban slums," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    2. Emily Rains, 2018. "Urbanization and India’s Slum Continuum: Evidence on the Range of Policy Needs and Scope of Mobility," Working Papers id:12633, eSocialSciences.
    3. Anirudh Krishna, 2018. "Globalised growth in largely agrarian contexts: the urban–rural divide," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-101-18, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    4. Busisiwe Nkonki-Mandleni & Abiodun Olusola Omotayo & David Ikponmwosa Ighodaro & Samuel Babatunde Agbola, 2021. "Analysis of the Living Conditions at eZakheleni Informal Settlement of Durban: Implications for Community Revitalization in South Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-16, February.
    5. Sahasranaman, Anand & Bettencourt, Luís M.A., 2021. "Life between the city and the village: Scaling analysis of service access in Indian urban slums," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    6. Coulibaly, Thierry Yerema & Managi, Shunsuke, 2022. "Populations in slums are happier than rural populations: The case of Mumbai," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    7. Nakamura, Shohei & Avner, Paolo, 2021. "Spatial distributions of job accessibility, housing rents, and poverty: The case of Nairobi," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    8. Ivan Turok & Jackie Borel-Saladin, 2018. "The theory and reality of urban slums: Pathways-out-of-poverty or cul-de-sacs?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(4), pages 767-789, March.
    9. Talukdar, Debabrata, 2018. "Cost of being a slum dweller in Nairobi: Living under dismal conditions but still paying a housing rent premium," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 42-56.
    10. Obaco, Moisés & Royuela, Vicente & Matano, Alessia, 2021. "On the link between material deprivation and city size: Ecuador as a case study," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    11. Elena Esposito & Scott F. Abramson, 2021. "The European coal curse," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 77-112, March.
    12. Mariaflavia Harari & Maisy Wong, 2018. "Slum Upgrading and Long-run Urban Development: Evidence from Indonesia," 2018 Meeting Papers 367, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Sugata Bag & Suman Seth, 2018. "Does It Matter How We Assess Standard of Living? Evidence from Indian Slums Comparing Monetary and Multidimensional Approaches," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 140(2), pages 715-754, November.
    14. Joshi, Nupur & Gerlak, Andrea K. & Hannah, Corrie & Lopus, Sara & Krell, Natasha & Evans, Tom, 2023. "Water insecurity, housing tenure, and the role of informal water services in Nairobi’s slum settlements," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    15. Tommaso AGASISTI & Geraint JOHNES & Marco PACCAGNELLA, 2021. "Tasks, occupations and wages in OECD countries," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 160(1), pages 85-112, March.
    16. Baird, Matthew D. & Engberg, John & Gutierrez, Italo A., 2022. "RCT evidence on differential impact of US job training programmes by pre-training employment status," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    17. Matthias Doepke & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2005. "The Macroeconomics of Child Labor Regulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1492-1524, December.
    18. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Michael Storper, 2020. "Housing, urban growth and inequalities: The limits to deregulation and upzoning in reducing economic and spatial inequality," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(2), pages 223-248, February.
    19. Keller, Wolfgang & Utar, Hale, 2023. "International trade and job polarization: Evidence at the worker level," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    20. Fofack, Hippolyte, 2008. "Technology trap and poverty trap in Sub-Saharan Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4582, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Informality; Slums; Social mobility; Urbanization; Volatility;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2019-102. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.