Volume 33 - Article 5 | Pages 113–144  

Patterns and selectivities of urban/rural migration in Israel

By Uzi Rebhun, Brown David

Abstract

Background: Movement from one type of area to another attests to factors of distance, socioeconomic barriers, and heterogeneity. Movement between two localities of one type entails fewer and different types of changes.

Objective: We examine urban-rural migration in Israel, a country that has experienced extensive development outside of its major cities.

Methods: We first describe and compare the urban and rural migration patterns of Jews and non-Jews. However, due to the small number of non-Jewish migrants in the 2008 census data set, the explanatory analysis focuses solely on Jews, probing the characteristics of migrants and non-migrants and differentiating among the former by whether migration is between urban and rural places, or among urban or rural areas.

Results: Examination of migration over five years points to a strong tendency to change residence, often involving a change of residence type. Urban-rural migration emphasizes the importance of specific individual characteristics and reflects the impact of life course and sociodemographic characteristics. We found a favorable sociodemographic profile of persons who leave the city for rural places, and a somewhat less favorable profile of people who are likely to move in the opposite direction. Migrants who move within settlement types are also somewhat more highly selected than persons moving toward cities.

Conclusions: Urban-rural population exchanges among Jews in Israel, while generally in accord with studies in other countries, tend to be less definite with respect to educational attainment and age.

Comments: Regardless of these differences, urban-rural exchanges of Jewish population in Israel are not a random process.

Author's Affiliation

• Uzi Rebhun - Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel EMAIL
• Brown David - Cornell University, United States of America EMAIL

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Fertility decline, changes in age structure, and the potential for demographic dividends: A global analysis
Volume 50 - Article 9    | Keywords: age structure, demographic dividend, demographic transition, fertility, migration, population momentum, working-age population

War and mobility: Using Yandex web searches to characterize intentions to leave Russia after its invasion of Ukraine
Volume 50 - Article 8    | Keywords: Brain drain, migration, Russia, search trends, Ukraine, Yandex

Mind the gap: Exploring urban–rural differences in US inter-county migration decisions
Volume 50 - Article 4    | Keywords: determinants of migration, inter-county migration, logistic regression, urban/rural gap

How do environmental stressors influence migration? A meta-regression analysis of environmental migration literature
Volume 50 - Article 2    | Keywords: environmental, instrumental variables, meta analysis, migration, partial correlation coefficient, weighted regression

Migration’s contribution to the urban transition: Direct census estimates from Africa and Asia
Volume 48 - Article 24    | Keywords: migration, population growth, urbanization