The Impact of Internal Migration on the Spatial Distribution of Population in Germany over the Period 1991-2017

Abstract

In 1885 and 1889 Ravenstein published two seminal papers on the role of migration in changing population distribution. This article analyses the importance of internal migration for shaping the spatial population distribution of Germany in the last three decades. We use a time-series dataset of annual inter-county migration flows from the German population register for the years 1991 to 2017. Population density is used as proxy measure for settlement type as an alternative to the commonly used BBSR typology. Our findings show that around 3 percent of the population moves between counties each year, and that the efficacy of internal migration in redistributing population has declined since the 1990s. Our results are in line with other recent work stating that the re-urbanisation phase, which was prevalent during the 2000s, has ended and sub-urbanisation patterns have become more prominent since 2011. We show that internal migration indeed plays an important role in shaping the distribution of population, especially the movements of young adults and families along the rural-urban continuum. In the 1990s and 2000s, internal migration tended to be more important for shaping regional populations than international migration and natural population change. Notably, this ranking reversed in the last few years and natural population change even became positive for densely settled regions.
 * This article belongs to a special issue on “Internal Migration as a Driver of Regional Population Change in Europe: Updating Ravenstein”.

Where do immigrants move in Germany? The role of international migration in regional disparities in population development

“…Our findings have strong implications for research on regional and urban population development (e.g., Heider, 2019b;Rees et al, 2017;Sander, 2014;Stawarz & Sander, 2020), which has in the past been strongly focused on internal migration-as primary driver of suburbanisation, counterurbanisation, and reurbanisation-as well as on the determinants of internal migration (e.g., Buch et al, 2014;Ferguson et al, 2007;Greenwood & Hunt, 1989). Concerning the latter, the question of whether economic opportunities or amenities are decisive in explaining regional disparities in migration rates has been controversially discussed in the scholarly literature.…”

“…For further evidence on this new phase of suburbanisation, seeStawarz and Sander (2020).8 In order to log transform the NMR, we had to add up the value of 1.9 As described above, foreign migration to Germany between 2015 and 2017 was strongly dominated by the massive influx of refugees. The external and internal migration flows of refugees were regulated by legal distribution schemes and probably biased due to errors in the official…”

Internal migration and housing costs—A panel analysis for Germany

“…These factors include population change, economic development, the labour market and the distance between regions (e.g. Graves, 1983; Stawarz & Sander, 2020; Stillwell & Congdon, 1991). Following the commonly used approach, we also control for the log of population size, the net rate of international migration (as percentage of the midyear population), the log of GDP per capita, the rate of unemployment in percent, the log of deflated average disposable income per capita and the log of the Euclidian distance in kilometre between the county centroids.…”

“…The application of a regional typology developed by the BBSR (Milbert, 2015) that distinguishes between the largest cities, cities, hinterland and rural areas to the county-level flow table and the calculation of net migration rates for the four county types (Bell et al, 2002) reveal the ebbs and flows of migration between rural and urban areas (see Figure A1). Since reunification in 1990, the pattern of migration in Germany has shifted from a suburbanisation trend of people moving down the urban hierarchy (1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998) to a period of reurbanisation characterised by moves up the urban hierarchy (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012) and back to a new period of suburbanisation (since 2015; Adam & Sturm, 2012;Beauregard, 2009;Busch, 2016;Buzar et al, 2007;Frey, 2017;Henger & Oberst, 2019;Ley, 1996;Sander, 2018;Stawarz & Sander, 2020). Figure 1 illustrates this pattern of change and the recent shift towards increasing netmigration losses for the largest cities, which may be driven by rising housing costs pushing people out of the cities into the hinterlands and rural areas.…”

“…The overall level of internal migration in Germany has been remarkably stable, with about 3% of the population moving between counties since reunification in 1990 (Stawarz & Sander, 2020). The stability in the level of intercounty migration stands in clear contrast to the declining trend in internal migration that has been observed in many western countries (Champion, Cooke, & Shuttleworth, 2018).…”