CityReads│What We should Talk about Depopulation?

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What We should Talk about Depopulation?

We should move away from a growth-centered paradigm to think about depopulation. it's time to think about a post-growth world.

Rachel Franklin, 2019. What we talk about when we talk about depopulation

Franklin, R. S., & van Leeuwen, E. S. (2016). For Whom theBells Toll. International Regional Science Review, 41(2), 134–151.doi:10.1177/0160017616675917 

Sources: https://blog.regionalstudies.org/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-depopulation/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0160017616675917?journalCode=irxa

Rachel Franklin, Professor of Geographical Analysis in the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) and the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University, talks about the role of spatial scale and context in understanding the manifestation and impacts of depopulation across neighborhoods, cities, and regions in the United States.

Periods of population decline have been numerous throughout the history of humankind. However, this was mostly caused by increases in death rates through famine, epidemics, or war. In such high-mortality populations, simple improvements in survival through nutrition and hygiene quickly resulted in growing and younger populations. Today, we face decline that is largely related to a lowering of fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1 children per women. In areas where natural growth rates are close to zero, population decline is also the result of outmigration

In 2017, the United States’birthrate reached a record low, with total fertility rates below replacement level and at their lowest since 1978. Paired as they were with a recent historical reversal in increases in life expectancy and a highly politicized debate about immigration, these statistics helped contribute to a maelstrom of demographic unease. Into a   context of long-term shifts in racial and ethnic demographic composition was now added the very remote but possible potential of eventual population decline. A shrinking population carries with it real challenges, such as lack of labor and increased dependency ratios, but also perceived challenges centered around decreased economic and political power: demography haslong been political.

Of course, confrontation with population decline is on the horizon or a reality for several countries around the world, from Japan to Germany. For many other countries, such as the United States, current national-level population growth or stability only serves to mask immense shifts in population distribution that result in the hollowing out of cities and regions.

A range of recent research has emphasized the importance of “places that don’t matter”—areas that may or may not be suffering population loss, but which have certainly suffered economically. Another approach is to focus more specifically on the impacts of population loss for cities and regions and the need for a regional research agenda. A recent special issue of the International Regional Science Review, for example, co-edited with Eveline van Leeuwen, highlighted the myriad ways in which loss affects cities and regions but also how loss and aging affect urban policy finance and even residential segregation. Another recent contribution, part of a larger volume addressing issues related to resilience and population loss, looks at the connections between a key engine of development, human capital, and population loss within U.S. cities. Basically, when places depopulate, the demographic effects are about so much more than aging and these effects matter for quality of life, social cohesion, and future socio-economic development.

Of all the ways in which depopulation affects regions, many of the  clearest challenges are oriented around transport. A recent book, co-edited with Eveline van Leeuwen and Antonio Paez, demonstrates that accessibility is a massive concern, as it brings together issues of funding, policy, vulnerability, and equity. For example, as regions and cities empty, the spatial mismatch between people and jobs may increase, particularly for vulnerable groups. In more remote areas, public transport becomes a less viable mode because of density and cost, while car ownership presumes a particular level of wealth and a younger age structure.  There is hope of course: once problems are identified, effective policy may alleviate the burden of inaccessibility. Additionally, technological change,  such as ICTs or “smart mobility” platforms may offer at least partial  solutions.

Turning back to the U.S., one thing that is striking is the sheer spatial  and temporal magnitude of loss that has occurred in many areas, all within a larger context of robust population growth—and underlying it all is of course economic and political change, but also demographic change. Places lose population through a limited set of demographic mechanisms, all acting in concert: a surfeit of deaths over  births, but also typically out-migration and a lack of net international migration. 

This map of county-level population change for the U.S. highlights the spatial demography of decline and lends itself to complementary sets of questions regarding the demographic impacts of loss: changes in racial/ethnic diversity, segregation, age structure, and income inequality, but also the importance  of migrant selectivity and origin-destination migration connections.

County-level population change for the U.S.

What we talk less about when we talk about depopulation

There are other aspects of local and regional population loss we discuss less. For one thing, population loss is occurring everywhere (Figure 2) and this has likely always been the case. This adds an interesting dimension to research on urbanization at a global scale, for example. From the above discussion, we know that depopulating places may suffer in a variety of ways, but perhaps it’s time for more explicit consideration of the interdependencies between growing and shrinking locations.

Grid-cell population change for the world, 2000-2015 (data source: CIESIN Gridded Population of the World)

And what about potential intersections between depopulation and  environmental change? Certainly, the links between over-population, food production, and environmental detriment have been the objects of research for decades and even centuries. However, while on the one hand a stable or shrinking population might be good for our  planet, the local environmental impacts of population loss are much less well understood and possibly equivocal.

Some things we should be talking about

As regional researchers, possibly the highest value contribution we could make in this arena would be to help ourselves and others come to terms with the “okayness” of population loss. For a host of reasons, it’s time to think about a post-growth world, and that means economically and demographically.

That said, when we engage with the downsides of depopulation, we may also need a more expansive view. If decline is due to increased mortality or suppressed fertility and household formation (that is, women and young people not having children or forming households when they’d really like to), then local, regional, and even national population loss or stasis becomes a symptom of substantial societal malaise that shouldn’t be ignored, even if the outcome is positive.

Moreover, taken in conjunction with heightened discourse around immigration and population composition (in particular, native-born population), perhaps dystopian narratives of increased social control around women’s rights and fertility aren’t so far-fetched. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that national governments in many countries limited access to birth control or abortion in an effort to increase fertility rates and, arguably, we see such restrictions emerging, de facto, in the United States today.

Or, if we’re talking about technological change and transport in shrinking areas, why not expand our scope to explore intersections between the automation of work, demographic structures, and depopulation? How can regions leverage these changes to their benefit?

Finally, although our fixation on regional and urban depopulation and aging is merited, it’s also limited: there will be a post-bulge era, it’s not so far off, and it will bring its own economic, social, and geographical challenges. We should be thinking ahead to that time.

The world is changing and growth or expansion, whether economic or demographic, should no longer serve as the sole paradigmatic guiding light. Inequality, decline, equilibrium, or stagnation may in fact be the new reality.

Alonso’s Five Bells

In his presidential address to the Regional Science Association over thirty years ago, William Alonso presented the case for “Five Bell Shapes in Developmen” and argued that “the developed countries will enter fully in to the realm of the right-hand tail of these curves”.

By Alonso’s reckoning, the five bell-shaped processes in development are (1) the stages of economic development, (2) social inequality, (3) regional inequality,(4) geographic concentration, and (5) the  demographic transition. The first process, development itself, simply characterizes the pace at which development occurs: a rapid pace that, at some point, slows. This simple proposition suggests in some way the remaining four. As a country or region moves through the stages of development, social inequality increases within an area across different socioeconomic dimensions such as race, class, or occupation. At some point, increases in social inequality slow or even decrease as the fruits of economic development diffuse from a relatively small group to the larger. This is the well-known Kuznets relationship between economic growth and inequality.

Concurrently, according to Alonso, development leads to increased spatial inequality in levels of development across regions. Some areas grow and some lag behind, with the result that the benefits of economic growth are not only distributed unequally across groups but also across regions. This too is expected to be temporary: after a certain level of development is attained, interregional movements of labor and capital should see development begin to level out across regions. The fourth proposition, geographic concentration, will also be familiar to regional scientists. 

Original locations of economic activity will draw in further resources and people, leading to concentrations of firms, people, and activity in general. Again, after some inflection point, other areas will  begin to look more favorable and a deconcentration or dispersion of activity should be observed.

Finally, in parallel with economic development come demographic changes: lower fertility and mortality rates, with downward shifts timed in such a fashion that rapid population growth is observed, followed subsequently by a balance in birth and death rates that leads to stable population sizes

When the pace of development slows, how much does it slow? Does the process of regional equalization end with all regions equal? ... Does  fertility drop to the point exactly at which births balance deaths? how  does the theory accommodate very observable population decline occurring  in many regions of the world, as opposed to stability or growth?

Understanding depopulation with Alonso’s Five Bells

Economic Development and Decline: It is generally assumed that a  declining population implies lower demand and hence slower output  growth, unless it is compensated for by new production technologies.  No proof has been found of a positive relationship between population size and GDP per head or between the growth rates of these variables. Nor has population decline in developed countries led to economic  decline per capita so far. However, at the regional level, these  relationships might actually exist.

Social Inequality: The prospect of population decline can be of considerable importance for an extensive welfare state. In particular in the so-called pay-as-you-go pension systems, the payments will exceed the contributions.  Countries (and regions) with aging populations will face an even less  sustainable financial basis.

Regional Inequality: This will increase regional inequality in terms of    income and age structure as well as in terms of public finances.

Geographic Concentration: Regional and urban decline are in most  countries accompanied by growth in other regions or cities. As with  growth, decline should not be expected to be evenly spread over  society or  over space. This is likely to increase social and regional  inequality.

Demographic Transition: The effect of decline caused by the  migration of skilled workers or decreasing fertility rates will be very different. This is mainly due to the different population dependency ratios and their effects on productivity levels.

Alonso’s presidential address and his taxonomy of development bells provide one lens through which to characterize humankind’s progress through various development states.  A strength of Alonso’s approach is his conceptualization of development processes as bell shapes that necessarily possess pre- and post-inflection point identities. Regional science, social science, and quite possibly human nature, as well, tend to judge progress and development in terms of growth. Alonso’s framework allows for identical processes to operate under different regimes or paradigms (both growth and decline).  It is time to think about the right-hand tails of the bells. A change of mind-set is one of the most important developments that need to take place to be able to deal with—and perhaps even take advantage of—population decline. Shrinkage can be an opportunity rather than a threat.

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