Laszlo J. Kulcsar

Post‐Socialist Restructuring and Population Redistribution in Hungary*

This research focuses on pathways by which national level macro-social transformations are transmitted to local communities. Our case is Hungary where we examine the relationship between post-socialist economic restructuring, widespread industrial dislocations, and urban-rural migration. Using secondary data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) and survey data from a study of 49 villages in 4 distinct rural regions, we demonstrate that post-socialist population deconcentration involved both suburbanization and net movement to villages, especially villages that are located relatively close to cities. Contrary to our expectations, movement to villages was from nearby settlements, not from large industrial centers. Moreover, migrants to villages were substantially better off than longer term village residents in terms of their human capital and attachment to the labor force. Consequently, post-socialist population deconcentration is not contributing to rural poverty as feared by some scholars.

The Formation and Development of Rural Retirement Destinations

According to the 2000 Census, 277 nonmetropolitan counties had 15 percent or higher population growth at ages 60 and older due to net in-migration during the decade of the 1990s, and hence were classified as rural retirement destinations (RRDs).1 As will be documented later in this chapter, some of these counties have been continuously categorized as rural retirement destinations since 1979, when the practice of identifying such areas was initiated by USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS), while other counties moved into the category in 1989 or in 2004 when subsequent reclassifications occurred.2 While considerable research has focused on the demographic and economic impacts of retirement migration, virtually no research has considered why some counties become retirement destinations, why some lose this status, and why some persist in attracting older in-migrants over multiple decades. Accordingly, this chapter focuses on these questions. Understanding this process is important because retirement destination status has been closely associated with nonmetropolitan population growth over the past three decades. In fact, retirement destinations are one of the only types of rural places to have experienced continuous population growth and net in-migration during this period. It is thought that population growth among rural retirement destinations is associated with certain types of environmental amenities that attract older in-movers, but as we will show in Chapter 4, attractive amenities are only one reason that older migrants give to explain their residential choices. Hence, retirement destinations are not simply places with favorable weather and attractive environmental amenities. Research in this chapter attempts to identify other county attributes that result in relatively high in-migration to rural places by older-aged people.