How borders affect human activities like economic life has been a frequent research topic during the last decades. A widespread view is that local societies are affected by the proximity of their borders in one way or another. Within a specific country, research on border issues often has a center – periphery perspective, problematizing sub-national administrative decision-making as well as local and regional economic development. Besides international migration, it is not thoroughly investigated how demographical processes are affected by borders, although population change is of crucial importance for economic development. The aim in this study is therefore to analyze how local population changes in localities close to administrative borders are affected by local population change in the center. With this purpose, the causal time-space relationship is estimated. In this study, for a regional administrative unit (county), the population change in the smallest available administrative units (parishes) closely located to a county border are compared to the population change in those parishes located in the center in a county. This study builds on a long term time perspective and uses information on population totals in parishes in Sweden between 1810 and 2000. The long-term time perspective is needed because population change normally is a slow process. The findings show that there is a border effect and, on average, the population of Sweden tends to migrate from border locations to center locations within administrative borders. However, this process is region-dependent and is opposite in the southern counties, where the population migrates from the central towards the border locations, which most often are located at the coast.