Population Decline in Lithuania: Who Lives in Declining Regions and Who Leaves?

Ubarevi?ien?, R?ta () and Maarten van Ham
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Ubarevi?ien?, R?ta: Lithuanian Social Research Centre

No 10160, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Since the 1990s, Lithuania lost almost a quarter of its population, and some regions within the country lost more than 50% of their residents. Such a sharp population decline poses major challenges to politicians, policy makers and planners. This study aims to get more insight into the recent processes of socio-spatial change and the role of selective migration in Lithuania. The main focus is on understanding who lives in those regions which are rapidly losing population, and who is most likely to leave these regions. This is one of the first studies to use individual level Lithuanian census data from 2001 and 2011. We found that low socio-economic status residents and older residents dominate the population of shrinking regions, and unsurprisingly we found that the most "successful" people are the most likely to leave such regions. This process of selective migration reinforces the negative downward spiral of declining regions. As a result, socio-spatial polarisation is growing within the country, where people with higher socio-economic status are increasingly overrepresented in the largest city-regions, while the elderly and residents with a lower socioeconomic status are overrepresented in declining rural regions. This paper provides empirical evidence of selective migration and increasing regional disparities in Lithuania. While the socio-spatial changes are obvious in Lithuania, there is no clear strategy on how to cope with extreme population decline and increasing regional inequalities within the country.

Keywords: socio-spatial polarisation; internal migration; shrinking regions; population decline; Lithuania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J11 O15 P20 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-cis, nep-geo, nep-tra and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Regional Studies, Regional Science, 2017, 4 (1), 57 - 79

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