Rural to urban long-distance commuting in Sweden : Trends, characteristics and pathways

• The rise of ICT and the shift toward jobs with more flexibility in working hours and places of work sparked popular debates about potential for a ‘rural renaissance’. A key argument was that there are increasing possibilities to live in the countryside while being employed in large cities. This paper uses data spanning two decades to examine trends in and characteristics of employee–employer ties between rural and urban areas in Sweden. Our main results suggest that rural-to-urban long-distance commuting is rapidly increasing, but not as fast as commuting flows elsewhere. Compared to the rural population at large, rural residents working in large cities constitute a strongly selected group of workers who are well paid, have long educations, are young and also have advanced knowledge-intensive occupations. Only about 30 percent of those who become rural-to-urban long-distance commuters have moved from urban areas; the vast majority constitute those who already lived in rural areas before starting to commute to urban areas. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

ICT

Long-distance commuting

Spatial interdependencies

Sweden

Urban–rural integration

commuting

rural area

rural-urban comparison

spatial variation

trend analysis

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)