Tendency of older adults to leave big cities in the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative regional analysis in Turkey

Abstract

This study investigates how territorial and age group disparities in implementing COVID-19 measures in Turkey triggered some of the older adults living in those regions to move to rural settlements and small towns. The direction of this mobility was from urbanized regions to rural regions. Data is collected from 201 older adult participants nationwide through longitudinal qualitative research. A combination of purposive and snowball sampling techniques was used to form the sampling of the research. Chi-squared test was applied to the collected data and significant correlation values are found between the age groups and the main motives for them leaving the big cities. Findings show that this mobility caused unexpected problems for older adults and contributed to the spread of the virus, but represents a counter-urbanization tendency in Turkey.