The demographic dynamics of youth cohorts of St. Petersburg during the period of educational migrations

Abstract

One of the key sources of the population of cities in the world and Russia is population migration with subsequent “fixation” in a big city for permanent residence. However, the question of the distribution of young generations after the completion of education within cities has been studied rather poorly, especially in the Russian-language literature. This situation is due to the infrequent appearance of socio-demographic statistics for such a study at the intraregional level. This paper seeks to fill this gap; it considers the intra-urban dynamics of a number of youth cohorts born in 1986–1995 in St. Petersburg for the period of 2002–2015. The article determines the amount of inflow of the studied youth cohorts into the city and city districts during the period mentioned above. It was revealed that during the period of educational migrations, the districts of the city experience a different increase in the number of youth cohorts; however, the territorial structure of the growth of young people in both studied generations remains stable. Also, the paper proposes a typology of city districts by the size of the inflow of a group of youth cohorts to the city districts and the real estate market, expressed in the cost of housing in the districts and in terms of housing commissioning. An attempt to explain the reasons for the differences in the growth of youth cohorts born in 1986–1990 in the districts of the city showed that the increase is associated with the introduction of new housing and does not have a direct relationship with prices in the real estate market.