Rural-Urban Migration Pathways and Residential Segregation in the Helsinki Region

Migration and residential segregation are intrinsically linked. However, little attention has been given to internal migration and its relationship with socioeconomic segregation. In this study, we illustrate the pathways individuals take between rural and urban settings and examine the association between these pathways and segregation in the Helsinki region. We use register data from Statistics Finland and sequence analysis to illustrate the mobility patterns of two 1980s birth cohorts aged 7 to 37. The majority of Finnish rural-urban pathways are associated with either a childhood spent in an urban area or a move to an urban area in young adulthood. We show that an even larger majority of people living in Helsinki at age 37 spent their childhood there or in other urban environments. We find that internal migrants are positively selected for education and income. A childhood in the outer urban regions of a city reduces the probability of living in lowincome neighbourhoods when controlling for socioeconomic status and family structure. We found no association between rural childhood and living in poor neighbourhoods.

Book review

Lehti, Hannu. (2020) The Role of Kin in Educational and Status Attainment. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. University of Turku.

The Association between Pre- and Post-Migration Wellbeing Factors with Integration among Russian, Somali, and Kurdish Origin Women in Finland

Pre- and post-migration related factors are likely to influence integration outcomes of migrants. This study aimed to investigate which pre-migration factors (basic education and potentially traumatic experiences) and post-migration wellbeing factors (quality of life and loneliness) are associated with integration outcomes (employment status, language skills, voting, media use, having host country’s native friends, participation inleisure activities) of migrant background men and women. The Finnish Migrant Health and Wellbeing Study (Maamu) was used, including working-aged adults of Russian, Somali, and Kurdish origin. Each integration outcome was analysed by each predictive factor with logistic regression, separately for the three groups and separately for men and women. The integration outcomes were somewhat differently associated with pre- and post-migration factors in the different groups. All these aspects are important to be taken into account in integration discourse to promote both integration and social wellbeing.

Are Self-rated Health, Native Finnish Friends and Having Children under School Age Associated with Employment?

In Western countries, entry into the labour market is difficult for humanitarian migrants, especially women. The aim of our study was to examine the association of health, native Finnish friends and having under school-age children with employment among humanitarian migrants.The data were drawn from the Finnish Migrant Health and Wellbeing Study. The sample comprised 479 migrants of Kurdish and Somali origin (men n=248; women n=231). We analysed the associations of self-rated health, having Finnish friends and under school age children with employment using multinomial regression modelling.After adjustment for several well-established determinants of employment, having Finnish friends and good health were robustly associated with employment among women. In the age-adjusted model, having 3–6 years old children was related to lower employment among women, but after all adjustments, the association became nonsignificant. All these associations were nonsignificant among male migrants.To conclude, good health and bridging social relations with natives play a role in strengtheningemployment opportunities among female humanitarian migrants.

Birth order and relationship quality between adult children and parents

The neglected middleborn hypothesis predicts that middleborn children should have a worse relationship quality with their parents compared to firstborn and lastborn children. However, prior studies investigating this question have produced mixed results. In this study, the neglected middleborn hypothesis was tested using a large-scale, population-based sample of younger adults from Germany. Relationship quality was measured by contact frequency, emotional closeness, intimacy and amount of conflict participants reported towards their mothers and their fathers. It was found that middleborns reported less intimacy towards their mothers than lastborns. However, in all other cases, middleborns did not differ from firstborns or lastborns in their relationship quality with their mothers and fathers. Thus, the study did not find convincing support for the neglected middleborn effect.

Book review

Tanskanen, A. O., & Danielsbacka, M. J. E. (2018). Intergenerational Family Relations: An Evolutionary Social Science Approach. (Routledge Advances in Sociology). Routledge.

Survival and Years of Good Life in Finland in the very long run

In this paper we apply the recently developed wellbeing indicator ‘Years of Good Life’ (YoGL) to Finland, which has the world’s longest annual demographic time series starting in 1722. We combine this with scenarios up to 2100 as developed under the SSP (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways) framework. YoGL is based primarily on the trend in life expectancy but it also considers age-specific proportions of persons above critical levels of quality of life indicators (using the Sullivan method). Since estimating these indicators for historical populations is a major challenge, the paper uses a wide array of sources to come up with a first crude estimation of how quality of life has changed in Finland over the centuries.

Why fertility has been declining in Finland after the Global Recession?

A steady improvement in the economy and employment since 2010 did not stop the drop in total fertility rate in Finland. Declining fertility now includes women in almost all age and educational groups in the country. This decline has continued long enough to also indicate a dramatic decrease in completed fertility, which is a departure from decades of sustained levels of completed fertility. Drawing from a range of publicly available descriptive data, this article assesses the extent to which old and new theories of fertility are relevant in explaining this development. In conclusion, the fertility development in Finland is surprising, and challenges traditional theories on fertility, which analyse fertility from economic and gender perspectives. Social interaction theory holds more promise. However, it is very difficult to find data sources which could elucidate the role of social interaction in the fertility decline. Designing pro-natalistic policies is challenging before there is more detailed evidence and understanding concerning the key drivers of the fertility decline in Finland.

Enhancing Survey Participation among Foreign-Born Populations

The Finnish Migrant Health and Wellbeing Study (Maamu) is the first large-scale population-based health examination survey among the foreign-born population in Finland, unique also at the European level. It provides information on wellbeing of three major foreign-born groups: Russian, Somali, and Kurdish. In data collection, extra effort was put into reaching the sampled persons (n=3,000), for example by recruiting bilingual personnel to carry out the data collection, reaching participation rates as high as 70%, 51%, and 63%, respectively. A comparison group of the general population was available from a general population survey. The main challenges in fieldwork included reaching sampled persons, supervision of the fieldwork personnel, and special linguistic or cultural needs. Our experiences show that participation rate can be improved by engaging the target groups in all stages of the survey process and using several recruitment strategies, ending up with succeeding in pointing out health inequalities in the population.

Exploring the Future Population and Educational Dynamics in the Arctic: 2015 to 2050

The Arctic is a geographical space surrounding the North Pole. It encompasses dozens of sub-national entities north of eight Arctic countries: Russia, Canada, Denmark, the United States, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. It is 20 million square kilometers land coverage settled with only 10 million people (2015). In the desire to learn more about the Arctic overall profile in population change, we aimed at producing cross-regional dataset covering all parts of the Arctic, and using it as a baseline for the cohort- component population projection. In this way, we model the future changes in the age, sex, and educational structure of sub-national populations, the latter reflecting the regional human capital. The projections are based on three alternative scenarios, taking into account regional characteristics (“Medium development”, “Arctic Boost”, and “Arctic Dip”). The results might be informative for those interested in the future dynamics of the Arctic population from 2015 forward to 2050.