In the two countries, there are important development disparities across rural and urban areas. Poverty is initially larger in rural than in urban areas; it is substantially more so in South Africa. South Africa's recent pattern of economic development has also affected the urban/rural balance. The rural population share has fallen significantly from 52% to 41% in ten years, a change that can be attributed essentially to migration from rural to urban areas. Though rural poverty has remained unchanged, the incidence of urban poverty has registered an important increase from 21% to 26%. The proportion of South Africa's poor living in urban areas has risen from less than a quarter to almost two-fifths. Again, this is indicative of an important trend towards an urbanization of poverty in South Africa. Migration from rural to urban areas has been associated with difficulties of the urban migrants to take full part in urban labor markets and benefit from the urban growth that is evident in the data. Hence, although poverty is still by and large more rural than urban, the evidence suggests that policy should increasingly be tilted by the fact that poverty is becoming more urban. That will mean inter alia that policy will want to alleviate the effect of migration and rural/urban demographic pressure on urban poverty. There are several ways in which this can be done. One of them is through better social integration of rural migrants into their new urban setting. Another one is through better-functioning and more open labor markets. Another one is through the provision of training and educational services that would enable rural migrants to participate better in labor markets and partake in the fruits of urban growth, as opposed to being left out and increasing urban inequality