No abstract

No abstract

The process of residential suburbanisation may cause changes in the age structure of the population as the age composition of in-migrants is younger than long-term residents. However, the demographic change associated with the second demographic transition as well as the co-existence of suburbanisation and reurbanisation of inner city areas may have ambiguous impacts on the age composition. The aim of this paper is to show changes in the age structure of the population in a post-socialist city in the light of suburbanisation using the example of the Kraków Metropolitan Area. In particular, we sought to show whether the intensive development of this process results in the inhibition of population ageing due to the influx of people in suburban areas along with the outward diffusion of the behaviours associated with the second demographic transition.

One of the main indicators of the second demographic transition (SDT) is the decline of fertility to below the replacement level (2.1 births per woman). The onset of the SDT in Europe spread across Western Europe in the 1960s and subsequently diffused to other parts of the continent. In Eastern Europe, a fall in total fertility rates below the replacement level was recorded at the beginning of the 1990s and was associated by some researchers with the collapse of the communist system and the introduction of a market economy. At present, countries of Eastern Europe record the lowest total fertility rate values (at 1.3–1.4), whereas a fertility recovery has been observed in Northern and Western Europe. Regional, subnational differences in fertility within particular countries associated with uneven dispersal of changes linked with the SDT, especially between urban, suburban, and rural areas, are known to exist but are less well articulated. This paper offers a comparative study of changes in spatial patterns of selected fertility indicators between Poland, and England and Wales, part of the UK, at the beginning of the 21st century. Despite apparent differences at the national level, the paper identifies similarities in the spread of SDT from core to peripheral areas and presents a reduction in the demographic divide between Western and Eastern Europe. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The evolution of population distributions in the Krakow Metropolitan Area (KMA) points: 1988, 1995, 2002 and 2012, covering