Inner Peripheries: Beyond the Demographic Drift David Peónab, Edelmiro López-Iglesiasc, Xosé Martínezd a Corresponding author.
[email protected] b Department of Financial Economics and Accounting, University of A Coruña c Department of Applied Economics, University of Santiago de Compostela d Department of Applied Economics II, University of A Coruña (UDC) Abstract Demographic ageing and depopulation of rural areas foster an economic decline that marginalize these territories and puts the access to basic services at risk. However, this situation is often a heritage from large migration processes in past decades and the demographic imbalances that left in consequence. Following a previous paper by two of us (Martínez and Peón, 2015), we use a statistical method to remove the demographic drift due to past migration. We apply it to the case of Galicia, to identify some inner peripheries that were able to moderate the process of ageing and depopulation dragged from the past. We characterize inter- and intra- county dynamics, and explore possible explanations for a better performance. Results show that most councils in recovery are head of counties of an intermediate size in terms of population. This would be in line with observed results about rurbanization across most of Europe (Eliasson et al., 2015). Keywords: Rural population drift, growth poles, spread and backwash effects, regional development, Galicia, demography JEL Classification: J11, R58, R12. 1 1. Introduction Economic authorities pursue to ensure social and territorial development and cohesion, such that the benefits of economic growth are widely shared. Nevertheless, the literature and statistical data continue to show a significant lag of most rural areas in terms of economic development and social well-being (Spoor, 2013; Akgün et al, 2015), which is reflected in their demographic trends (European Commission, 2013).