Settlement-level economic performance as a factor influencing working-age population migration in South Africa.

South African towns and cities face substantial challenges, owing largely to the pace of economic growth to date and continued migration of people from rural areas. The widely accepted push–pull theory of migration assumes that migration is a functional and inevitable outcome of spatial inequality. Economic drivers are frequently used to explain population movements in South Africa, given that the country’s biggest socio-economic challenges include high unemployment, stark inequality and persistent poverty. This study empirically investigates the theoretical perspective of the push–pull model from an economic and settlement-based standpoint. It establishes a settlement-level perspective of the relationship between economic performance and working-age population change in South Africa between the 2001 and 2011 Censuses. Fine-resolution downscaled economic and population datasets are used, applying spatial GIS-based methods and techniques, together with statistical correlation analyses, to explore and quantify the relationship. Population change in the working-age population is found to have a positive statistically significant association with economic performance at settlement level. The relationship is multifaceted, given the complexity of South Africa’s economic and development landscape, with considerable variability between different economically profiled settlement types, and different demographic groups based on age, gender, employment status and skills level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]