Guessing ... because of appreciating real estate and concentration of jobs, living in certain cities/areas became culturally synonymous with "being a winner" wh

Guessing ... because of appreciating real estate and concentration of jobs, living in certain cities/areas became culturally synonymous with "being a winner" while staying in rural/industrial towns meant "being a loser". So the big cities became the bottle neck through which all young people need to funnel before they deem each other worthy of starting families. And that's a bottle neck on population growth. The same mechanism exists elsewhere but the contrasts between "stagnant vs vital" would be more pronounced in SK, probably because of the rate and scale of the economy over the last 40-50 years. Maybe? The government needs to stop fuelling the bubble. Instead, raise mortgage rates (so that "time in market" stops being a factor) and force industry to spread out offices and jobs (of all ranks) evenly throughout the country.