Educational disparities in place of residence. The urban-rural divide in six European countries from a social stratification perspective

In recent years, many European countries have experienced growing disparities between urban and rural areas. These disparities are associated not only with differences in infrastructure, public goods and cultural provision, but also with heterogeneous demographic developments. In this paper, we intersect the perspectives of spatial demography, urban geography and social stratification by examining whether spatial inequalities between educational groups have increased in six European countries since the turn of the millennium. Analytically, we focus on (a) the educational composition of metropolitan and rural populations and (b) the residential patterns of educational groups. The empirical analyses using European Social Survey (ESS) data suggest that while there are no systematic changes over the two-decade study period, patterns of residential disparities differ considerably across the analysed countries. In particular, France and Sweden emerge as countries with significant differences in residential location between educational groups. At the same time, there is no evidence that the educational gradient of place of residence is stronger among the younger than the older age groups.