articles: Microregional fragmentation in a Swedish county

Örjan Pettersson ()
Additional contact information
Örjan Pettersson: CERUM - Centre for Regional Science, UmeåUniversity, SE-901 87 Umeå, Sweden

Papers in Regional Science, 2001, vol. 80, issue 4, 389-409

Abstract: This study of the county of Västerbotten in northern Sweden reveals significant differences in socio-economic conditions between populations living in different residential environments. A cluster analysis was performed in order to classify the nearly 500 microregions into a manageable number of groups with distinctive profiles. A seven-cluster solution contains groups ranging from remote and sparsely populated areas with poor socio- economic conditions and a large proportion of elderly to the most prosperous residential environments within the major centers. Besides high disposable incomes, the relatively wealthy areas also show high educational levels and better-than-average health status. In this way the county could be broken down into a mosaic of local housing environments with very different prerequisites for consumption and economic development. Increasingly, we find socio-economic marginality problems even within densely populated regions. The complex and dispersed pattern of disadvantaged and underprivileged residential areas all over Västerbotten indicates the difficulty in treating counties and municipalities as homogeneous regions. Our findings may have major implications for regional planning and regional policy.

Keywords: Regional development; rural change; welfare; cluster analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 O18 R11 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-10-25
Note: Received: 17 August 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/10110/papers/1080004/10800389.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:presci:v:80:y:2001:i:4:p:389-409

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cience/journal/10110

Access Statistics for this article

Papers in Regional Science is currently edited by Raymond J.G.M. Florax

More articles in Papers in Regional Science from Springer, Regional Science Association International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().