Elderly drivers: when is it time to hand over the car keys?

[basingstoke123]

A popular argument, but for many present rural dwellers, if they had not had a car in the first place, or been unable to drive for any reason they would never have moved to a rural location.

The opposite is actually the real problem.

Many rural communities are having problems because people are being either forced or choose to move away.

These are not people who have moved there, rather those who have been there for all there lives, and often second or third generation.

I don't think that diagram is quite correct. It's investment not lack of it that has reduced job opportunities in rural areas.

Investment in large, expensive farm machinery has taken jobs away. Take a friends farm for example. Not a big farm just 550 acres. Late seventies there were nine people working on it including him and his father. By the year 2000 it was just him alone and a couple of students taken on to cart corn in harvest.

Main employment in rural areas was in agriculture, forestry and quarrying/mining. Go back fifty years around here and all three employed quite a few people. There were nine people employed in woods local to this village. The Forestry Commision actually built nine houses for them to live in . Five miles away there was another group of six forestry commission houses. Several other villages have FC houses dotted around. The later ones are easy to recognise because they're built from wood. The earlier look like good quality fifties council houses. There's now a part time forester covering all the local woods. When there's any clearance there's a couple of blokes with a big Valmet tree harvester and a tractor and log trailer.
The ironstone quarries and mine closed down altogether 40 years ago.

So farming jobs vastly reduced through investment in machinery and ditto for forestry jobs. Iron ore quarries and mine closed due to steel making investment in other countries.

I'm not sure it is that simple. The decline in rural populations has been happening for at least 150 years. Likewise, the decline in numbers of people working in farming and agriculture. How much is mechanisation and automation a cause, and how much is it a response to global trade? Global trade having adverse effects is not a new problem. It was happening in 1880.

But mechanisation and automation has also cut the numbers of people working in many areas, not just farming. Yet large cities have seen other jobs created to take their places. Rural areas, for some reason, do not benefit from these new jobs.This is not a uniquely English problem. You see the same throughout the world. The quality of life is much better in a small town, or village, or country side, yet people move to larger towns and cities. Those with skills, education, training, have opportunities that do not exist in their home area. (And those at the bottom are often worse off, but there is always a dream of gold paved streets - just around the next corner).

When people move away, or others do not move in, then you end up with all sorts of social problems.

[basingstoke123]

One of these he reasons I chose the diagram was the mention of younger people. What used to happen was that the Parents would move as they got older, but their children would "inherit" the rural home. This maintains an age range

This was common on farms. The parents would move into an annex or one part of a larger house, or have a bungalow build nearby. Sometimes other relatives would take over.

[Cunobelin]

The opposite is actually the real problem.

Many rural communities are having problems because people are being either forced or choose to move away.

These are not people who have moved there, rather those who have been there for all there lives, and often second or third generation.

I don't think that diagram is quite correct. It's investment not lack of it that has reduced job opportunities in rural areas.

Investment in large, expensive farm machinery has taken jobs away. Take a friends farm for example. Not a big farm just 550 acres. Late seventies there were nine people working on it including him and his father. By the year 2000 it was just him alone and a couple of students taken on to cart corn in harvest.

Main employment in rural areas was in agriculture, forestry and quarrying/mining. Go back fifty years around here and all three employed quite a few people. There were nine people employed in woods local to this village. The Forestry Commision actually built nine houses for them to live in . Five miles away there was another group of six forestry commission houses. Several other villages have FC houses dotted around. The later ones are easy to recognise because they're built from wood. The earlier look like good quality fifties council houses. There's now a part time forester covering all the local woods. When there's any clearance there's a couple of blokes with a big Valmet tree harvester and a tractor and log trailer.
The ironstone quarries and mine closed down altogether 40 years ago.

So farming jobs vastly reduced through investment in machinery and ditto for forestry jobs. Iron ore quarries and mine closed due to steel making investment in other countries.

I'm not sure it is that simple. The decline in rural populations has been happening for at least 150 years. Likewise, the decline in numbers of people working in farming and agriculture. How much is mechanisation and automation a cause, and how much is it a response to global trade? Global trade having adverse effects is not a new problem. It was happening in 1880.

But mechanisation and automation has also cut the numbers of people working in many areas, not just farming. Yet large cities have seen other jobs created to take their places. Rural areas, for some reason, do not benefit from these new jobs.This is not a uniquely English problem. You see the same throughout the world. The quality of life is much better in a small town, or village, or country side, yet people move to larger towns and cities. Those with skills, education, training, have opportunities that do not exist in their home area. (And those at the bottom are often worse off, but there is always a dream of gold paved streets - just around the next corner).

When people move away, or others do not move in, then you end up with all sorts of social problems.

The here is no complete or correct answer, but you have partially answered your own question.

There are multiple reasons that younger folk leave these areas. Education, "higher" job ambitions and many others.

However as these leave there is less infrastructure as they become unviable and hence the place becomes less attractive for the investors that could provide jobs or create infrastructure

[pete75]

I'm not sure it is that simple. The decline in rural populations has been happening for at least 150 years. Likewise, the decline in numbers of people working in farming and agriculture. How much is mechanisation and automation a cause, and how much is it a response to global trade? Global trade having adverse effects is not a new problem. It was happening in 1880.

But mechanisation and automation has also cut the numbers of people working in many areas, not just farming. Yet large cities have seen other jobs created to take their places. Rural areas, for some reason, do not benefit from these new jobs.This is not a uniquely English problem. You see the same throughout the world. The quality of life is much better in a small town, or village, or country side, yet people move to larger towns and cities. Those with skills, education, training, have opportunities that do not exist in their home area. (And those at the bottom are often worse off, but there is always a dream of gold paved streets - just around the next corner).

When people move away, or others do not move in, then you end up with all sorts of social problems.

The decline in the number of farmworkers has been happening over the past 150 years or more fore the reasons I described. Go back to about 1860 and most corn was cut by men with scythes and threshed by men with flails. In about 1870 horse drawn reapers started to be used to large numbers of men with scythes no longer required. A few years later steam powered thrashing drums came into use so large numbers of flail men no longer needed. Then between the wars combine started to be used thus putting the thrashing teams out of work. WIth combines corn stacks were no longer needed. Making them was a labour intensive process.
I don't know if rural populations have decreased in the last 150 years though it depend show you define rural If you mena people living in the countryside yes but if you include people living in villages then it's probably gone up.
The new jobs were often in offices and service industries and there's few jobs of this type in the countryside or even in villages. Rarely does a village have a bank, many don't even have a shop or even a pub but they are likely to have more houses than 50 years ago.
One of the main reasons younger people leave the countryside now is lack of suitable housing. Selling off council housing hasn't helped. In our village, population about 210, there are about six council built old people's bungalows and fourteen council houses. Many of the latter are now privately owned. Time was when there was a steady stream of this housing becoming available for younger people - the residential cycle being council house to OAP bungalow to churchyard. The selling of family sized council houses has stopped this.