From village to city: Rural-urban migration is why most people now live in urban areas, and why that share keeps rising.
The points to remember
- Rural-urban migration: people moving from the countryside to towns and cities.
- Because of it, a greater proportion of people now live in urban rather than rural areas.
- The world's urban population overtook the rural population in 2007.
- The urban share is still increasing: about 58% in 2025.
- Most rural-urban migration is internal: within one country.
Real example: the world's urban population grew from 0.7 billion in 1950 to 4.8 billion in 2025, while the rural population only doubled. Most of the newcomers moved within their own country: from a Bangladeshi village to Dhaka, not to another country.
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People move because of what pushes them away from the countryside and what pulls them towards the city.
Push and pull factors
- Push factors drive people out of rural areas; pull factors draw them to cities.
- Push: few jobs, low farm incomes, mechanisation replacing farm workers.
- Push: drought, famine, crop failure, land degradation, conflict, poor services.
- Pull: jobs and higher wages, education, healthcare, better services and infrastructure.
- Pull: friends and relatives already there, social benefits, a perceived better life.
- Higher birth rates or lower death rates are not reasons for migration.
Push (leave rural)
- Few jobs, low farm incomes
- Mechanisation
- Drought, famine, land degradation
- Conflict, poor services
Pull (go to the city)
- Jobs, higher wages
- Schools, hospitals
- Friends and relatives
- A perceived better life
Real example: Dhaka's garment factories employ about 4 million workers, mostly young women from villages: a strong pull. In the countryside, floods and river-bank erosion destroy farms every year: a push.
Migration reasons only: Asked why a city's population grew through migration? Higher birth rates or lower death rates do not count: give push or pull factors.
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Not every migrant chooses to move. The difference between forced and voluntary migration is choice.
Forced or voluntary
- Voluntary migration: people choose to move, usually for jobs or education.
- Forced migration: people have no choice: conflict, disaster, eviction, loss of land.
- Many moves mix both: a drought makes farming fail, so leaving is hardly a free choice.
- Governments can force moves too, for example to clear land for a dam.
Voluntary
- A choice
- For jobs, education, family
- Often planned
Forced
- No real choice
- Conflict, disaster, eviction
- Often sudden
Real example: in Bangladesh, a young woman who leaves her village for a factory job in Dhaka migrates voluntarily. A family whose land is washed away by river-bank erosion is forced to move, often to the city's informal settlements.
Remember it as: Voluntary = chose to go. Forced = had to go.
Migrants move for a better life. Some of what they expect is real; some is only perceived.
Perceived or real advantages
- Migrants move for the advantages they expect: jobs, wages, schools, hospitals, a better life.
- Some are real: on average city incomes, schooling and healthcare are better.
- Some are only perceived: many find informal jobs with low, insecure pay.
- Housing is often an informal settlement with poor water and sanitation.
- Many still send money home, so rural families gain too.
Expected
- A steady job
- A good home
- Schools and hospitals
Often found
- Informal, low-paid work
- A crowded informal settlement
- Services too few or too far
Real example: about a million people live in Dharavi, in Mumbai, on about 2 km². Its thousands of small workshops (recycling, pottery, leather) give real jobs, but many homes share toilets and drains flood in the monsoon.
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Within one country, rural-urban migration follows a pattern over time, and in richer countries it can partly reverse.
The trend within a country, and deurbanization
- Within a country, rural-urban migration is fast at first, then slows once most people are urban.
- The rural population may fall for decades: rural depopulation.
- Deurbanization: people leave big cities for suburbs, small towns or the countryside.
- Reasons: jobs leaving the city, cheaper housing, more space, retirement, working from home.
- Depopulation rate = (start - end) ÷ start × 1000 (per 1000), or × 100 for %.
Calculate a depopulation rate: France's rural population fell from about 17.8 million (1960) to 14.6 million (1970). Rate = (17.8 - 14.6) ÷ 17.8 × 1000 = 180 per 1000 (18%). Never give a negative answer.
Real example: France's 'rural exodus' emptied villages in the 1950s and 1960s; since the 1970s its rural population has stayed at about 14 million. Detroit, USA, shows deurbanization: as car factories closed and families moved to the suburbs, it fell from 1.85 million people in 1950 to about 640,000 in 2020.
How this comes up: Paper 2, Section A: two views of a city years apart, then suggest two reasons for its growth [2] (May 2026).
Figure 1 shows Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1990, when about 3.7 million people lived there. By 2020 about 14.3 million did, in a city of tall buildings and highways.
Suggest two reasons for the change in population in Kinshasa.
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