Patterns of residential mobility amongst children in greater Johannesburg-Soweto, South Africa: observations from the Birth to Twenty Cohort

Abstract

Frequent residential movement challenges children to adapt to change, amongst others, houses and neighbourhoods, friends and schools, and this may have either or both negative and positive influences on their health and well-being. However, there is currently little knowledge of the patterns of child residential mobility within South Africa's urban environment. This paper uses address data of children in the Birth to Twenty cohort to analyse the frequencies and patterns of residential mobility observed over the first 14 years of these children's lives. Of the 3,273 children enrolled into the cohort in 1990, two thirds of the children (64%) have moved home at least once. Nonetheless, a third of the children never moved, indicating some stability among the urban child population. Residential moves by children were found to be associated with both the lowest resourced and the highest resourced households.