Description

GEO2_ ZA identifies the household's district council (also known as district municipality) within South Africa from 2001 to present. District councils are the second level administrative units of the country, after province. GEO2_ZA is spatially harmonized to account for political boundary changes across census years. Some detail is lost in harmonization; see the comparability discussion. A GIS map (in shapefile format), corresponding to GEO2_ZA can be downloaded from the GIS Boundary files page in the IPUMS International web site.

The full set of geography variables for South Africa can be found in the IPUMS International Geography variables list. For cross-national geographic analysis on the first and second major administrative level of any country refer to GEOLEV1, and GEOLEV2. More information on IPUMS-International geography can be found here.

Comparability — General

District councils for 1996 are not included in this spatially harmonized variable due to substantial changes in boundaries, specifically redrawing internal boundaries in the urban areas post-apartheid South Africa.

Where boundaries changed over time, units were harmonized to create units with boundaries that remain stable over time.

Boundary changes for GEO2_ZA are too numerous to list here, but users should be aware that there were changes over time.

Universe

Availability

• South Africa: 2001, 2007, 2011, 2016