Public Services Impact on Urban Migration Phenomenon in Romania

Both urban and rural migration phenomena are determined by standard of living, unemployment rate, widespread corruption, poverty and lack of private investments. It is widely considered that macro-economic indicators are responsible for the standard of living at a national level, imaging a top-down effect, without analyzing how local level is impacting the national standard of living. In this mindset, local authorities are not concerned about urban migration since this is a national effect, and their decisional contribution would be anyway an ineffective one. This paper aims at revealing that there are some local administrative elements that might influence urban migration, public services being part of them. Bearing in mind the necessity of fulfilling citizens’ requests, public managers are facing a mandatory duty regarding public services quality. In this paper there are considered public utility services that cover the entire population of urban areas, services that are creating an impact on urban migration phenomenon. The research is a quantitative one, involving both collected information and statistics. The results indicate a relation between public services and urban migration phenomenon, exploring mid-term effects. Certainly there are additional elements that create impact on urban demographics and some of these are decisive in emerging urban migration, but for sure public services are having a clear influence.