Shrinking populations have been gaining increasing attention, especially in postsocialist Eastern and Central European countries. While most studies focus on specific cities and regions, much less is known about the spatial dimension of population decline on the national level and the local factors determining spatially uneven population change. This study uses Lithuanian census data from the years 2001 to 2011 to get insight into the geography of population change for the whole country. Lithuania has experienced one of the highest rates of population decline in the world in the last decades. The predictive models show that regional factors have a strong effect on the variation in population change throughout the country but also reveal that sociodemographic and economic area characteristics play a role in the process of decline. Our results give little hope to those who would like to reverse the ongoing trends of population change and emphasize the need for spatial planning to cope with the changes. This is an approach which currently does not exist in practice in Lithuania.
Based on a relational understanding of socio-spatial polarisation as a nested, multidimensional and multi-scalar process, the paper applies a comparative perspective on current trends of socio-spatial development in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Comparing current scholarship and data on demographic and economic processes of centralisation and peripheralisation, we also examine political debates around issues of polarisation in different scholarly national perspectives. Despite variations in national discourses, our comparative perspective conveys strong similarities between the three Baltic countries in terms of socio-economic and demographic concentration in the capital regions to the disadvantage of the rest of the country. The analysis of regional policies further points to tensions between a concern for territorial cohesion on the one hand, and an adherence to the neo-liberal logic of growth and competitiveness against the backdrop of post-socialist transition on the other hand. An overview of case studies in the three countries shows a common reliance on endogenous resources to foster local development, conforming to the neo-liberal logics of regional policy. However, these strategies remain niche models with different levels of success for the respective regions and also among the populations in the region. As a result, we argue for a stronger role of regional policy in the Baltic countries that goes beyond the capital regions by better addressing the negative consequences of uneven development.
Natural decrease and out-migration are the main processes causing depopulation of rural areas in most of the easternEU countries. The causes of depopulation are varied as well as numerous and might differ within the same country or even a region. Both internal and international migration play an important role inthepopulation decline in Lithuania, but their relative importance differ from region to region. Depopulation leads to a falling population density and therefore to the shrinkage of social networks, especially in the rural areas. It has broad consequences for the life quality, causes pessimistic attitudes and threatens the future development of the sparsely populated areas. There is little hope that the existing demographictrends will change in the nearest future. However, the analysed processes are usually perceived purely negatively, thoughit is not true in somerespects.
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