Rachel Franklin (p), Eric Seymour

Jouke Van Dijk

Although the United States’ population has increased with every decennial census, ongoing redistribution—the outcome of migration, but also regional differences in fertility and mortality—has meant that, even as some areas grow rapidly, others face the challenge of continued population loss. At one level, the classification of areas as shrinking is straightforward; this label can be attached to any place that lost inhabitants in a given time period. A deeper look, however, dispels the facile categorization of places as growing or shrinking: history of change matters, as does the geographic context in which change is occurring. Moreover, the loss of inhabitants occurs in a variety of ways, demographically speaking: loss of population through outmigration (or even lack of net international migration) is different from loss through natural decrease—an excess of deaths over births. And how a place depopulates is important. It provides important information about the fundamental attractiveness of a place (do people continue to move there, on net?), and helps explain the changing characteristics of inhabitants (e.g., their age composition). To illustrate the value of this perspective, we use U.S. counties as the unit of analysis to differentiate shrinking areas based on their temporal and spatial context of change. We then assess the demographic sources of loss for different types of areas, focusing on domestic and international migration, as well as natural increase/decrease. Our results highlight the diversity of kinds of depopulation that exist across the U.S. county landscape and emphasize the role of demography.

Yannis Psycharis, Anastasia Panori (p), Panayotis Pantazis

Rachel Franklin

The introduction of gravity models in economic literature to explain variations of flows between different locations, focusing on trade, transportation, economics or population dynamics, has long been a productive field of study. Their application in migration research has often been at the center of attention, investigating internal migration phenomena focusing mostly on students’ and graduates’ movements (Alm and Winters, 2009; Biagi et al., 2011; Pietrzak et al., 2012; Faggian and Franklin, 2014; LeSage and Thomas‐Agnan, 2015; Cullinan and Duggan, 2016). The investigation of “push” and “pull” factors, that affect migration decisions, as well as the evolution of migration flows within a country, can be focused either on: (i) individual attributes, like family structure and background, acting as facilitators or blockers for migration movements; or (ii) regional characteristics, where the masses of the origin and destination regions could be determined by their economic and demographical characteristics, e.g. population size and density, unemployment rates, salaries and wages.
The study, first, develops a gravity model towards exploring the student migration flows in Greece during their transition from high-school to university. It explores potential “push” and “pull” regional factors that form the synthesis of the migration flows, focusing on socio-economic regional attributes. Secondly, it aims on exploring students’ decision to migrate by investigating the effect of individual characteristics, such as gender, family background and structure. For the analysis, we use individual data covering a 9-year period (2006-2014), including all student movements within Greece. Data coverage offers an opportunity to investigate an important period for Greece, characterized by structural reforms and income variations, and identify any existing patterns or changes in the factors that affect migration decisions and form migration flows.
The analysis indicates that distance, regional and family characteristics, such as parents’ educational background and occupation type, play a key role in migration decisions, as they are found to be significant parameters. We argue that understanding the main determinants of these migration patterns is fundamental for policy makers to better identify potential actions that could strengthen the attractiveness of a place.

Michael Tamminga (p), Christian Rulff, Thomas K. Bauer

Anastasia Panori

In Germany, being one of the oldest countries in the world, only surpassed by Japan, demographic change is one of the defining social challenges in the coming decades. However, the process of demographic change is heterogeneous on the regional level and might be reinforced or mitigated by migration movements.
In order to understand this relationship, it is essential to analyze the drivers of migration patterns in Germany. Using innovative data containing every single migration movement between municipalities (NUTS-3) disaggregated by age-groups, based on administrative records between 2000 and 2015 for the first time; we are able to have a precise look on internal migration in Germany. By enriching this data with regional economic information like GDP, unemployment rates, age-specific wages, and housing prices, we can identify the relevant push and pull factors of internal migration over different stages in the life-course. Another contribution to the existing literature concerning internal migration is the inclusion of housing prices as a price index on a small regional level.
Using PPML gravity models, we are able to identify the predominant role of regional economic considerations as drivers for internal migration in Germany, especially for the younger age-groups who are the majority of interregional migrants. In particular as push factors, labor market considerations are the most powerful explanatory variables for interregional migration. Furthermore, by including the share of persons in the same age group as the migrants as an explanatory variable, we can show, that internal migrants of the same age groups indeed cluster in densely populated areas and reinforce the regional heterogeneity of demographic change.

Lourens Broersma, Arjen Edzes , Jouke Van Dijk (p)

Michael Tamminga

In a dynamic labour market, a high degree of labour mobility is desirable to help employment adjust favourably to changing demand conditions. An inefficient allocation of labour resources may negatively affect the longer-term employment level and growth rate of potential economic output and, in the short run, limit the pace at which an economy can grow. Therefore, the free movement of labour between countries constitutes still one of the central principles of the EU and is an important component of the completion of the single market. As far as allocation of labour resources is concerned, European border regions are particularly vulnerable. Often they are located in peripherical parts of the country where they are not very well connected to the national urban and economic centres. To achieve more cooperation and integration, economic growth and prosperity, cross-border cooperation and the possibilities of cross-border commuting become a serious option to improve the allocation of labour and the regional economic situation in border regions in European countries. This is the first major analysis of cross-border commuting between European countries. A model of cross-border commuting was developed and estimated for EU-countries and Switzerland for 1998-2016. Commuting is determined by the situation in both living and working countries. We find that (i) real hourly wages, (ii) the share of highways, (iii) the unemployment rate (iv) the distance between EU-countries and (v) a common language determine total EU-cross-border commuting and commuting by gender, education and age.