Romanians leaving for work abroad, the stress in the cities and the economic crisis are making a trend that started in 1997 more visible: people living in villages would rather leave for work abroad than take a job in a city and therefore the number of those trading villages for cities is lower, while corporate workers are starting to develop small businesses or building a home in a rural area.
This ruralization does not help the economy that much, because it replaces – say, a 6,000 lei (EUR1,336) gross monthly income in a developed city which goes towards loans, fuel and food with a lower income. Moreover, in rural areas people grow their own food.
Almost 107,000 Romanians traded cities for the countryside in 2015, while fewer than 78,000 people traded their village for a city, according to the National Statistics Institute. In comparison, the number of Romanians leaving cities for the countryside was four times lower in 1989, and rural to urban migration was seven times higher. Why is this?
“If we look at the demographics of the two areas of residence, we can see that most of the workforce in rural areas has migrated abroad for economic reasons mainly and this led to a reduction in the potential of the domestic rural to urban migration. People in rural areas that migrated chose to maximize their chances by going abroad rather than to a city in Romania,” explained Professor Monica Roman, Ph.D., with the Statistics and Econometrics Department of the Bucharest University of Economic Studies.
On the other hand, migration from the urban to rural areas has been happening for two reasons mainly, she added. The first reason, which goes for all age groups is the development of a periurban area, i.e. those residential districts that are not under the administration of cities but have all the features of an urban area. The second is that there is migration from urban to rural areas among the elderly, retirees, who choose to retire to the countryside where living costs are lower, more in tune with their incomes.
Professor Gheorghe Zaman, corresponding member of the Romanian Academy and director with the National Economy Institute says the retirees in the city move to the countryside because living costs are lower and the level of comfort is higher.
“There are also many urban dwellers who get a summer or vacation home in a rural area, which has an impact on the occupancy rate in the rural areas, because those who get such homes usually pay someone to take care of them while they are not there. Moreover, urban centers are expanding and many people choose periurban homes,” Gheorghe Zaman added.
Usually the people who build homes in the countryside and work in the cities also add small businesses or farms where they grow their own food.
Migration from cities to villages took off at the onset of the 1997-1998 crisis when the leu depreciated a lot, showing two significant trends: on the one hand, people started leaving for work abroad and, on the other, many moved to the countryside because living in a city had become too expensive. That year, 1997, was the first when the number of urban dwellers moving to rural areas (more than 81,000) was higher than the number of people moving from rural to urban areas (about 68,500).
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)