ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the changing distribution of the working population and employment, and the effects of the mobility of job-providing institutions on the behaviour of their employees. In fact, firms, like people, are mobile. New firms open their gates, existing ones expand or contract, seek new locations for their activities, or close down. Since the Second World War, there have been considerable shifts in the urbanisation of the Dutch municipalities. Comparing cross-sectional data for 1947, 1956, 1960 and 1971, it is apparent that the number of rural municipalities has strongly decreased. The municipality of Nieuwegein was created in 1971 by a fusion of the former municipalities of Jutphaas and Vreeswijk. The number of inhabitants has grown rapidly in the past decades, from about 13,000 in 1971, to 40,000 at the beginning of this decade, and to nearly 60,000 today.
