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Occasional Paper

Scotland's Census 2001 - Statistics on Travel to Work or Study

Age of rural and urban commuters 

Table 5A, Table 5B and Table 5C provide the same information on age of commuters as Tables 3A, Table 3B and Table 3C, except that the information is provided by urban/rural classification rather than local authority area.

For large urban areas, there were net gains in “daytime population” for all age groups.  This gain was 17 per cent of the workers/students living in those areas, although it was as high as 26 per cent for those aged 45-54 (Table 5C).

Other urban areas gained a substantial number of people aged under 16 but, other than a small gain of 65 and overs, these areas lost “daytime population” for all other age groups.  Overall, there was a loss of “daytime population” equivalent to 2 per cent of resident population of workers/students.

Accessible small towns had a large net loss of “daytime population” (30 per cent of resident workers/students).  There were losses for all age groups other than the under 16s.  Half of resident 25-34 year olds who worked/studied, commuted away to do so.

Remote small towns made small gains across all age groups.

Accessible rural areas lost “daytime population” across all age groups apart from people aged 25-34.  The losses were greatest for the under 25s.

Remote rural areas had substantial losses for all age groups.  This loss was greatest (over a third of resident workers/students) for those aged 16-24.

Table 6 shows, for people working but not studying, the average age of commuters by the urban/rural classification of their place of residence and their place of work.

Non-students who travelled to a place of work were, on average, aged 39.4.

People who lived in large urban areas were the youngest (38.6 years) with those living in remote rural areas the oldest (41.6 years).

For all area types except accessible rural and remote rural areas, residents were younger than people working there.

The youngest commuters lived in large urban areas and commuted to accessible rural areas (38.0 years).  The oldest were people who lived and worked in remote rural areas (41.9 years).