Individual gains and trade-offs from counterurban migration in Sweden

Abstract

Counterurban migration is known to be driven by lifestyle motivations, in which employment considerations are more of an enabling factor than a driver. In this paper, the self-reported motives, along with labour-market and lifestyle outcomes, of counterurban migration are investigated. The focus is on trade-offs between work-related and lifestyle-related amenities for different subgroups based on recent survey data in Sweden collected from families with children in 2018–2019 who left metropolitan regions. The key results indicate that, overall, counterurban movers are satisfied with their decision and the majority cite the importance of lifestyle amenities over work-related amenities. Our conclusion is that, besides voluntary trade-offs, counterurban migration does not necessarily pose a trade-off between labour-market and lifestyle-related amenities since, to a large extent, individuals reported better outcomes in both areas. This study makes two contributions. Firstly, the data considers self-reported outcomes, including labour-market outcomes beyond income and lifestyle outcomes. Secondly, we explore individual characteristics of counterurban migrants in relation to post-migration outcomes in different destinations.

Keywords

• Counterurbanisation
• internal migration
• lifestyle
• subjective well-being (SWB)
• urban hierarchy
• D10