Moving home again? Never! The migration patterns of highly educated individuals in Sweden

Two major challenges in Europe’s rural areas are an ageing population and the diminishing share of human capital. While this pattern is not new, the effects are becoming increasingly visible and acute. The long-term loss of younger individuals has in many ways “drained” the labor market and the economic market power of rural areas. This is the focus of our research. Using micro data covering the entire Swedish population, we identify all university graduates from the year 2001. We analyze them with respect to whether they live in a rural or urban region before starting university and where they live at two points in time after graduation. We use a series of multinomial logit regressions to determine what factors affect their short-term and long-term choices of location. We find only minor differences on between these two time-perspectives with a few important exceptions related to civil status and background.