IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jku/econwp/2022-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Robotization, Internal Migration and Rural Depopulation in Austria

Author

Listed:
  • Karim Bekhtiar

    (Institut für Höhere Studien (IHS) Wien)

Abstract

Internal migration flows from rural to urban areas have greatly contributed to population declines in many rural areas across both Europe and the US. At the same time there is mounting evidence for a tight connection between internal migration and shifts in labor demand, with the latter being heavily affected by the rise of automation technologies. Therefore this paper analyzes the effects industrial robotization has had on manufacturing employment and internal migration in Austria during the period 2003-2016, specifically focusing on rural-to-urban migration flows. The results show that robotization has caused significant declines in manufacturing employment to which populations reacted by increased out-migration. This migratory response takes the form of rural-to-urban migration, thereby contributing to population declines in many rural areas in Austria. These rural-to-urban movements are primarily driven by young and medium/low skilled individuals, i.e. those groups that bear the strongest shock incidence.

Suggested Citation

  • Karim Bekhtiar, 2022. "Robotization, Internal Migration and Rural Depopulation in Austria," Economics working papers 2022-07, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    • Handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2022-07
    Note: English
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.jku.at/papers/2022/wp2207.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paolo Veneri & Vicente Ruiz, 2016. "Urban-To-Rural Population Growth Linkages: Evidence From Oecd Tl3 Regions," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 3-24, January.
    2. Faber, Marius & Sarto, Andrés & Tabellini, Marco, 2021. "Local Shocks and Internal Migration: The Disparate Effects of Robots and Chinese Imports in the US," IZA Discussion Papers 14623, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Giovanni Peri & Akira Sasahara, 2019. "The Impact of Global Warming on Rural-Urban Migrations: Evidence from Global Big Data," NBER Working Papers 25728, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Michael Greenstone & Alexandre Mas & Hoai-Luu Nguyen, 2020. "Do Credit Market Shocks Affect the Real Economy? Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Great Recession and "Normal" Economic Times," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 200-225, February.
    5. Timothy J. Bartik, 1991. "Who Benefits from State and Local Economic Development Policies?," Books from Upjohn Press, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, number wbsle.
    6. Tolbert, Charles M. & Sizer, Molly, 1996. "U.S. Commuting Zones and Labor Market Areas: A 1990 Update," Staff Reports 278812, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    7. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2003. "The skill content of recent technological change: an empirical exploration," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Nov.
    8. Wolfgang Dauth & Sebastian Findeisen & Jens Suedekum, 2014. "The Rise Of The East And The Far East: German Labor Markets And Trade Integration," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(6), pages 1643-1675, December.
    9. Card, David, 2001. "Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 22-64, January.
    10. Brian C. Cadena & Brian K. Kovak, 2016. "Immigrants Equilibrate Local Labor Markets: Evidence from the Great Recession," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 257-290, January.
    11. David Lagakos, 2020. "Urban-Rural Gaps in the Developing World: Does Internal Migration Offer Opportunities?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(3), pages 174-192, Summer.
    12. David H. Autor & David Dorn & Gordon H. Hanson, 2013. "The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2121-2168, October.
    13. Thomas Dax & Michael Fischer, 2018. "An alternative policy approach to rural development in regions facing population decline," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(2), pages 297-315, February.
    14. Kenneth M. Johnson & Layton M. Field & Dudley L. Poston Jr., 2015. "More Deaths Than Births: Subnational Natural Decrease in Europe and the United States," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 41(4), pages 651-680, December.
    15. Jonna Rickardsson, 2021. "The urban–rural divide in radical right populist support: the role of resident’s characteristics, urbanization trends and public service supply," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 67(1), pages 211-242, August.
    16. Andrew Foote & Michel Grosz & Ann Stevens, 2019. "Locate Your Nearest Exit: Mass Layoffs and Local Labor Market Response," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 72(1), pages 101-126, January.
    17. Maarten Goos & Alan Manning, 2007. "Lousy and Lovely Jobs: The Rising Polarization of Work in Britain," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(1), pages 118-133, February.
    18. Michael Kenny & Davide Luca, 2021. "The urban-rural polarisation of political disenchantment: an investigation of social and political attitudes in 30 European countries," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 14(3), pages 565-582.
    19. Brueckner, Jan K. & Lall, Somik V., 2015. "Cities in Developing Countries," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1399-1455, Elsevier.
    20. Bound, John & Holzer, Harry J, 2000. "Demand Shifts, Population Adjustments, and Labor Market Outcomes during the 1980s," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(1), pages 20-54, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Weller, Jürgen, 2022. "Tendencias mundiales, pandemia de COVID-19 y desafíos de la inclusión laboral en América Latina y el Caribe," Documentos de Proyectos 48610, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bekhtiar, Karim, 2024. "Robotization, Internal Migration and Rural Decline," VfS Annual Conference 2024 (Berlin): Upcoming Labor Market Challenges 302396, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Andreas Beerli & Ronald Indergand, 2014. "Which Factors Drive the Skill-Mix of Migrants in the Long-Run?," Diskussionsschriften dp1501, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    3. Michael Amior & Alan Manning, 2018. "The Persistence of Local Joblessness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(7), pages 1942-1970, July.
    4. Eric D Gould, 2019. "Explaining the Unexplained: Residual Wage Inequality, Manufacturing Decline and Low-skilled Immigration," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(619), pages 1281-1326.
    5. Andreas Beerli & Ronald Indergand & Johannes S. Kunz, 2023. "The supply of foreign talent: how skill-biased technology drives the location choice and skills of new immigrants," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(2), pages 681-718, April.
    6. Sofía Fernández Guerrico, 2023. "Trade Shocks, Population Growth, and Migration," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/357236, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    7. Karim Bekhtiar, 2023. "The decline of manufacturing employment and the rise of the far-right in Austria," Economics working papers 2023-09, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    8. Amior, Michael, 2018. "The contribution of foreign migration to local labor market adjustment," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 91705, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Marcelo Castillo & Diane Charlton, 2023. "Housing booms and H‐2A agricultural guest worker employment," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 105(2), pages 709-731, March.
    10. Mike Zabek, 2024. "Local Ties in Spatial Equilibrium," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 287-317, April.
    11. Andrew Foote & Mark J. Kutzbach & Lars Vilhuber, 2021. "Recalculating ... : How Uncertainty in Local Labour Market Definitions Affects Empirical Findings," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(14), pages 1598-1612, March.
    12. Gregory, Terry & Salomons, Anna & Zierahn, Ulrich, 2016. "Racing With or Against the Machine? Evidence from Europe," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145843, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    13. Gaetano Basso & Giovanni Peri & Ahmed S. Rahman, 2020. "Computerization and immigration: Theory and evidence from the United States," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 1457-1494, November.
    14. Ning Jia & Raven Molloy & Christopher Smith & Abigail Wozniak, 2023. "The Economics of Internal Migration: Advances and Policy Questions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 144-180, March.
    15. Stuhler, Jan & Jaeger, David & Ruist, Joakim, 2018. "Shift-Share Instruments and the Impact of Immigration," CEPR Discussion Papers 12701, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Amior, Michael, 2020. "Immigration, local crowd-out and undercoverage bias," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108490, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. David Autor & David Dorn & Gordon Hanson, 2021. "On the Persistence of the China Shock," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 52(2 (Fall)), pages 381-476.
    18. Selod, Harris & Shilpi, Forhad, 2021. "Rural-urban migration in developing countries: Lessons from the literature," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    19. Scherpf, Erik & Weber, Bruce & Grobe, Deana & Edwards, Mark, 2018. "Participation in USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): Effect of Local Labor Market Conditions in Oregon," Economic Research Report 277565, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    20. Daniel A. Broxterman & William D. Larson, 2020. "An empirical examination of shift‐share instruments," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(4), pages 677-711, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Employment; internal migration; robots; rural depopulation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2022-07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: René Böheim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vlinzat.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.