(Withdrawn) Why are people in their early middle-age years moving to rural areas in the 2000s?

Matti Saari, Statistics Finland

The migration gain of cities fell clearly 2002 in Finland and it has not increased in the economic boom in 2003-2008. The migration loss of the central rural area has not become bigger in those years either. The central factor in the process has been that young middle aged persons move lively from cities also to peripheral rural areas from which they lively re-migrate to certain central rural areas. In certain rural areas the out-migration rates of persons aged 30-39 is very small. The question is why certain rural areas have managed to stop the re-migration process and others have not. The present study examines which structural socio-demographic features of each rural area are connected to the migration streams of persons aged 30-39 years. We study migration stream from a central rural area to another and have taken into account the characteristics of the area of departure and arrival. The aim of the study is to find factors that in the 2000s explained age-specific in-migration stream rates of central rural areas where the in-migration stream rates of persons aged 30-39 years were bigger than the mean. Later we study these connections in the 1980s and 1990s. There are a lot of speculations about the reasons of the new ‘turnaround’ or counter-urbanization trend in Finland and we hope to bring some clarifications to the topic. The data is population data by 5 year age groups in all Finnish municipalities in 1975-2008. We have also migration data of all migration streams between migration areas by 5 year age groups 1977-2008. Migration areas are a collection of a few municipalities. An economic data we have only on the migration area level 1975-2007.