Over the last year we have heard about the poor financial conditions of several municipalities, which have led, for example, to the closure of schools or library branches. But the reason is still the decrease in the number of inhabitants. In the municipality of Peipsiääre, for example, the number of inhabitants is decreasing by an average of 100 people per year.
Just over 5,000 people live in Peipisääre, most of them elderly. According to current trends, in 10 years there will already be a thousand fewer inhabitants.
“It’s relatively real, if we don’t improve mobility and plan more living spaces, it will happen like this. /…/ If you look at the numbers, the birth rate is stable, the same goes for the people who come here and the people who leave, more or less a similar number. What worries us is mortality. Mortality still puts us in the red. /…/ In the long run it affects the budget of the municipality, it is a financial loss of around 250,000 euros per ‘year,” said Piibe Koemets, mayor of Peipsiääre.
A larger movement from the countryside to the cities took place in Estonia in the early 2000s. Currently, more people are moving into most Estonian municipalities than moving out.
“The biggest problem concerns those rural areas where before the restoration of independence they were agricultural areas, the regions of central Estonia, the Pärnu-Jõhvi axis – these areas are in the most difficult situation, where the population is decreasing and also the “Emigration continues to a certain extent. But western Estonia, the islands, several regions of southern Estonia are where the most people have arrived,” explained Tiit Tammaru, professor of urban and demographic geography at the University of Tartu.
Although the great wave of migration from the countryside to the cities is now being reversed, its consequences are still being felt today. The older generation remained in rural areas, which is why the number of births is particularly low and the mortality rate is high. This is not only a demographic problem, but also makes the diversity of cultures and lifestyles disappear, said sociologist Marju Lauristin.
“If we look at what is happening with small schools in the countryside, these same small schools are in fact bearers of the same local identity and through their persistence it is actually like this network of roots that nourishes the local culture itself. This concentration is not only concentrated in big cities, but also in big houses.
And it seems that somewhere this limit occurs. You can already feel that there are many people who really don’t want that kind of life anymore. In fact I also see among young people that not everyone runs in Tallinn now,” Lauristin said.
It cannot be said that all of Estonia is concentrated only in the capital and that the rest of the regions remain empty. Many people move to the immediate vicinity of larger cities, because in Tallinn, for example, an average wage earner has many options, but in Saku, Jüri or Keila a better and cheaper life can be found. At the same time, remote working also allows you to travel further.
“They are moving to the immediate vicinity of these same cities, but at the same time they have moved further and further away, the inhabitants of Tallinn have found their residence in Raplamaa. /…/ We see that rural areas are attracted by their environment of life, whether they go to work in the city, whether they work remotely. People don’t necessarily have to work every day. to go to work and this also allows you to live outside the bigger cities,” Tammaru said.
“The most beautiful places in nature, in Western Estonia, on the islands, as well as in Southern Estonia, are the most picturesque places, where many people began to move, on the one hand, in the sense of their real home, but they are appeared many so-called multi-local people, who have the first house in the city, the main house, but then the second house is somewhere in a beautiful natural place,” he added.
Rootsiküla in Peipsiääre, for example, has also completely transformed into a cottage area.
“This village brings very little revenue to the municipality. But at the same time they also need the streets to be in order, the snow to be shoveled – these are all public services. In fact, when I met the owners of these cottages, they actually spend half of the year with us and they want to contribute, but they can’t contribute. It’s just that the country’s tax system is like that,” Koemets said.
The municipality of Peipsiääre is only half an hour from the city of Tartu and could also attract new residents, not just summer ones. According to the mayor, however, it is not that simple.
“The young man does not want to travel two or three times a day to the city and back, but he wants more often. He wants to feel free. Other workers too. This is the limit. Indeed, people love this place, they themselves say that here it’s very beautiful and they would like to live here, but at the same time we don’t have any land to offer you if you ask, you can find some on the real estate portal, because everything has been bought, even the apartments. The building development would definitely bring us more people”, he Koemets said.
2022 and 2023 were the years with the lowest number of births in Estonia this century. At the same time, Estonia is increasingly attracting immigrants, and it is immigration that has increased our country’s population over the past seven years.
Migration analysis by the University of Tartu predicts that in a quarter of a century there will be around 90,000 more inhabitants living in the capital than today. Most come from immigrants.
“This trend is exactly the same everywhere, that is, big cities, whether Tallinn or London or Stockholm, etc., have become very colorful in terms of nationality. In many cities, even in Tallinn, almost half of the residents have arrived from other countries. And there is no reason to think that this trend will somehow change,” Tammaru said.
People from foreign countries increase the population of Tallinn the most, but they also increasingly reach other regions of Estonia.
“However, there are two types of immigrants. On the one hand there are people who were born and raised elsewhere, but there are also many of our compatriots returning, who once left Estonia after entering the European Union. Quite a few of them returned to Estonia,” Tammaru explained.
On the other hand, we must also be ready when more and more people are forced to leave their country due to wars and, for example, extreme weather conditions. And all this will probably increase the population of our country in the future.
“We cannot say that in any case we claim that here we are exactly this number. This number will change in any case and we must be ready. Of course it must not change irrationally. I would not be at all in favor of everyone, whoever comes, leaving it come. But we have to know that we have to be ready ourselves. That we have our own culture and our own language – which is rhetorically why we don’t want so many people from other countries to come here – not only do we not maintain it ourselves, but we can also make it interesting for these other people, that the language can be used, so to speak, that we also value our culture and our linguistic environment. /. ../Actually, if we don’t use our language, if we don’t develop the language, if we don’t appreciate our culture creators, then what kind of culture are we talking about,” Lauristin said.
2023-12-30 17:31:00
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