No abstract

There is more and more empirical evidence to show that highly skilled people are an important determinant of economic growth. Consequently, policy-makers are eager to keep their graduates in the region or attract graduates from elsewhere. It is also well known that people with a higher level of education exhibit high rates of spatial mobility. Much less is known about mobility patterns according to discipline and academic grade. Do the best people stay or leave, and does this vary according to discipline and type of region? This paper investigates the relationship between ability, field of study and spatial mobility using a micro‐dataset on Dutch university and college graduates. The findings indicate that there are substantial net flows mainly towards the economic centre of the Netherlands, but that there are also flows between peripheral regions and to other countries. The paper finds that university graduates are more spatially mobile than vocational college level graduates and that when one looks at spatial behaviour according to discipline, there are also striking differences between graduates. This, however, does not necessarily mean that peripheral regions also lose their best graduates. For several disciplines, employers in the peripheral areas are able to retain the graduates with the highest grades, contrary to what the standard human capital framework predicts. However, the study finds that if graduates leave the region, those with the highest grades are more likely to move abroad.Migration , higher educated graduates , human capital , the Netherlands , periphery , multinominal logit ,

Some regions in The Netherlands have been experiencing population decline in the last decade(s). Although decline figures are much lower than in more traditional areas of decline in Europe, Dutch planners and policy-makers feel the need to develop several strategies of planning for decline. This paper gives an overview of regional population trends in the Netherlands up to 2040, showing that at the regional level, population growth and decline can occur next to each other in both urban and rural areas. The number of single-person households is expected to continue growing. However, single households form a varied group, and population trends differ substantially between urban and rural areas. The strategies applied by policy-makers who focus, so far, on accommodating decline through measures on the housing market are analysed. Next to this, some additional policy alternatives are discussed. Copyright (c) 2010 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

Urban-rural interdependences are modelled based on wages, cost of living and interregional migration and commuting. Rural-to-urban commuting generates a scenario where the relative level of urban wages can continue to outperform rural wages without residential migration and increased costs of living acting as equilibrating forces. The spread of urban workers could be detrimental for rural regions without clear mechanisms for their human and financial capital to penetrate local economies. Therefore, "What's in it for the rural?" depends upon the ability of rural regions to capture the value attached to highly mobile, skilled workers choosing to live in the rural region.

This paper provides insights into the spatial mobility patterns of young graduates in the Netherlands. Both home-to-HEI (higher education institution) as well as HEI-to-work mobility results in net flows towards the central economic region of the Netherlands. However, many graduates move within the larger central and peripheral regions and these flows are focused on cities. There is a strong regional component to graduate mobility as origins and destinations tend to be relatively close to the chosen HEI. Flows seem to be influenced by regional familiarity, with relatively many graduates moving back to familiar home regions. Often, a city's young graduate labour force and graduate residents have studied at a local HEI. Cities close to the economic core areas benefit from outflows of graduates from the largest employment centres.