Population Subgroups Responsible for New Urbanization and Suburbanization in Estonia

Abstract

The results of this study indicate that during the 1990s urbanization was the dominant process in inter-regional migration, and residential suburbanization prevailed at the intra-metropolitan level.These tendencies are new and different from the trend existing during the Soviet era.These urbanization and suburbanization trends correspond closely with the expectations of the city life cycle and the differential urbanization models, indicating that patterns in Estonia during the 1990s follow those experienced by capitalist countries. The evaluation of urbanization and migration trends by age, education, gender and ethnicity, using 2000 census data, indicate that young people, females, migrants with a higher education, and Estonians accounted for the national urbanization trends. Also, in contrast to the Soviet era, Estonians participated fully in the urbanization trends of the 1990s. Suburbanization was the predominant direction of movement within metropolitan areas, and this trend was similar for all population subgroups. Yet people with a higher education and those in the family ages were most likely to suburbanize. Estonian migration trends for the total population were similar to many countries of the former Soviet Union, but different from East Central European countries.We believe that the main reason for such a contradiction stems from the compositional differences of the populations in these two groups of countries. Migration trends of population subgroups,however,seem to be similar across countries in transition. In addition, this study develops a Migration Concentration Index (MCI) to measure concentration and deconcentration processes in inter-regional migration.