Unequally ageing regions of Europe: Exploring the role of urbanization

Abstract

Publication: Population Studies, forthcoming.Since young adults tend to move from rural to urban regions whereas older adults move from urban to rural regions, one may expect that differences in population ageing across urban and rural regions have increased. This paper examines whether differences in population ageing across urban and rural NUTS-2 regions of the EU-27 over the period 2003-2013 have diverged. We use the methodological approach of convergence analysis, quite recently brought to demography from the field of economic research.Unlike classical beta and sigma approaches to convergence, we focus not on any single summary statistic of convergence, but rather analyze the whole cumulative distribution of regions. Such an approach helps to identify which specific group of regions is responsible for the major changes. Our results suggest that, despite the expectations, there was no divergence in age structures between urban and rural regions, rather divergence happened within each of the groups of regions.regional cohesion | population ageing | convergence in ageing | urbanization | NEU-JOBS urban-rural classification | NUTS-2 https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/hj28v Urbanization and regional difference in ageing in Europe | June 2, 2020 | 1-13