Out-Migration of Youth

The Extent of Youth and Young Adult Out-Migration

The historical out-migration from rural to urban areas in the United States has been extensive and has largely involved youth and young adults. The migration of rural people to urban areas represents one of the most substantial migration events in the history of the United States, involving millions of persons during the period from 1920 through the present. Sociologist Lorraine Garkovich (1989) records that the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that the rural farm population declined by more than 22.4 million persons from 1920 to 1950, and demographer Calvin Beale notes that the U.S. rural (farm) population declined at an annual rate of 2.7 percent in the 1980s, 3.1 percent in the 1970s, 4.6 percent in the 1960s, and 3.8 percent in the 1950s. Since annual population change levels of 2 percent or more are often seen as large, the extent of this out-migration is obvious.

Garkovich further notes that during the 1920s and 1930s, some sources report that one-third of those moving from rural areas were less than fifteen years of age and that another one-third were fifteen to twenty-five years of age. Similarly, data for the 1980s show that 40 percent of all net migration from nonmetropolitan to metropolitan areas involved young persons fifteen to twenty-nine years of age.

During the 1990s, many areas, particularly in the Great Plains and Midwest, continued to lose population, with much of that loss involving youth and young adults. An analysis of available census data shows that out-migration occurred in 272 of 546 counties [Page 1048](49.8 percent of all counties). In those counties most closely tied to farming, out-migration occurred in two-thirds (66.4 percent) of all counties. It is likely that the vast majority of this out-migration involved youth and young adults. Out-migration from many rural areas in the United States continues, particularly in those areas that have few economic opportunities outside of extractive industries.

Youth migration is also a driving force in international population change and urbanization. The International Handbook on Internal Migration provides case studies of migration in twenty-one nations, and these studies find youthful out-migration, especially from rural to urban areas, to be a major factor impacting levels of urbanization. In 2000, the United Nations estimated that the world's population had gone from being only 30 percent urban in 1950 to being 47 percent urban in 2000, and that the world's population would be 58 percent urban by 2025. This urbanization would be especially rapid in developing nations, which are expected to become more than half urban by 2020 and to nearly double their urban populations between 2000 and 2025. The out-migration of youth and young adults is projected to play a prominent role in the process of urbanization in developing nations.

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