Staying or leaving? The effects of university availability on educational choices and rural depopulation

Abstract

Universities are often viewed as engines of local economic growth that could mitigate rural depopulation. However, university studies might make individuals more prone to move. We explore this issue in a quasi‐experiment arising due to a sudden reduction in the number of student places at a regional university in northern Sweden in 1998. We find that the reduction in student places affected both educational choices and long‐term migration. Women studied at a university further from home and became more mobile, while men neither studied nor moved. Also, to study at a distant university had a larger impact on migration than studies nearby. This heterogeneity contributes to the understanding of how education affects migration from rural areas.

No Place Like Home: Place-Based Attachments and Regional Science

“…This kind of changing composition in unobservable characteristics would mean that controlling for education would overstate the increase in home-state residence. However, if education causally increases mobility as suggested by previous literature (Malamud and Wozniak, 2012;Barone et al, 2019;Lovén et al, 2020), then not controlling for education hides some of the increase in birth-state attachment over time. We cannot be very confident on how to interpret these estimates, but we might think about Columns (2) and (3) as providing some rough bounds.…”

Close ties, near and far away: patterns and predictors of geographic network range among older Europeans

“…Such distant-family networks are most prevalent among older adults with high educational backgrounds and those living in rural areas. Individuals with higher education may have higher mobility in their life courses (Viry 2012 ), and the younger generations may live away from their rural hometowns (Rérat 2014 ; Lovén et al 2020 ). This observation adds nuance to previous findings that more educated individuals possess more diverse networks (e.g., Litwin 2001 ; Fiori et al 2006 , 2008 ).…”

“…In contrast, people in rural areas are more likely to embed in local family-focused networks (Logan and Spitze 1994 ; Djundeva et al 2019 ). Meanwhile, younger adults often move away from rural areas after graduating from universities (Rérat 2014 ; Lovén et al 2020 ) and thereby become long-range connections in their parent’s core network. Second, although communication technologies have alleviated geographic constraints on one’s access to support from core confidants, older adults are less likely than the young to be proficient or active users (Mok et al 2010 ; Harper et al 2020 ; Cornwell and Goldman 2021 ).…”

No Place Like Home: Place-Based Attachments and Regional Science

“…However, if education causally increases mobility as suggested by previous literature (Barone ©Southern Regional Science Association 2022Association . et al, 2019Lovén et al, 2020;Malamud and Wozniak, 2012), then not controlling for education hides some of the increase in birth-state attachment over time. We cannot be very confident on how to interpret these estimates, but we might think about Columns (2) and (3) as providing some rough bounds.…”