International Regional Science Review

"This paper presents estimates of the rate of population redistribution to the core areas of 44 developing countries over the period 1950-80. Particular attention is given to the period 1970-80, a time during which the core areas of developed countries experienced substantial declines in their rates of net inmigration. The principal finding is that the core areas of most developing countries are still experiencing high and, in a number of cases, increasing rates of net inmigration." The author contends that "this finding confirms the developmental model of spatial concentration and dispersal and should lay to rest other explanations of deconcentration, including arguments that focus on diseconomies of absolute size in the core area or on fluctuations in the aggregate economy." The difference between the population growth rates of entire nations and of core areas is used as a measure of interregional migration. Data for the 44 countries and information on the data sources are included in appendixes.

"Many developing nations have introduced policies designed to slow the rate of population growth of their largest cities. This article argues that there is a strong case for an explicit experimental or adaptive approach in policy design. Using the examples of Sao Paulo in Brazil and Seoul in South Korea, it is argued that coordinated trial and error methods with appropriate monitoring, evaluation, and policy revision can prove beneficial, especially given the high levels of uncertainty which surround both the objectives and the contexts of urbanization policies in most countries."

"The main finding of this article is that net internal migration to the core regions in the countries of the developed world, which subsided in the 1970s, increased in the 1980s, although not to the level of the 1960s. In some countries of northwest Europe there is a balance now in net flows between core and periphery. In the countries of the periphery of Europe and Japan net internal migration to the core regions increased slightly in the 1980s. Net migration flows to the periphery have completely reversed in Canada, and net flows out of the core regions of the United States have been significantly reduced. In eastern Europe, however, there is still moderate net migration to the core regions without any interruption as seen in western Europe, North America, and Japan. In South Korea and Taiwan rates of net migration to the core regions have been reduced from their high levels of the 1970s, but they are still quite high and show no clear sign of a break from the past."

"Using ten Asian megacities as examples, this article discusses a range of megacity characteristics and problems, including population growth, economic structure, spatial strategies, land policy, urban service provision, institutional development, and managerial problems. In spite of major progress in urban service delivery, ineffective land policies and inadequate cost-recovery systems remain serious obstacles. Megacities need and are promoting policentric spatial structures, but implementation lags in many cases. Institutional reforms are needed to cope with the metropolitan region character of megacity growth."

"This paper assesses some of the recent attempts to explain the perceived growth reversal between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in the United States during the 1970s. The paper argues that the reversal in population trends was not a one-time, radical shift in settlement trends, but rather the result of more continuous underlying industrial trends. Indeed, since 1979, population growth has again become faster in metropolitan than nonmetropolitan areas." The paper includes three sections. Regional and area population and industrial earnings growth patterns are first summarized for the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Theories of polarization and polar reversal are then evaluated and found to be inadequate. Finally, a reconstruction of the neoclassical model is proposed.

Natural decrease is no longer rare in the US. By 1989, 34% of all US counties had experienced at least one year of it. Natural decrease is most common in rural areas remote from metropolitan centers. Regional concentrations of natural decrease exist in the Great Plains, the Corn Belt, and East Texas with scattered pockets in the Ozark-Ouachita Uplands, upper Great Lakes, and Florida. Natural decrease is caused by age structure distortions stimulated by protracted, age specific migration. Although temporal variations in fertility also contribute to natural decrease, these variations are not due to below average fertility. Natural decrease is symptomatic of fundamental changes in the demographic structure of an area. -Author

"Analysis of the relationship between cancer rates and urbanization for United States counties for the period 1950-54 reveals the expected urban/rural differences for many digestive, urinary and respiratory organ cancers and for female breast cancer. Similar urban/rural differences existed in many other Western countries. By 1970-75, however, urban/rural differences in the United States had substantially narrowed." It is noted that "available data do not allow formal tests of the relationship between these changes and specific etiological factors, but the data suggest that the spatial convergence is related to the changing geography of such risk factors as smoking, alcohol consumption, manufacturing, and socioeconomic status and to the diminished size and role of the white foreign-born population, as well as to such confounding factors as medical practices and population migration."

"Individual labor market experiences [in Venezuela] are examined in terms of educational attainment, labor force participation, and wages received. Explanatory factors include personal attributes and two multivariate scales measuring place characteristics related to development. The results indicate that place characteristics associated with development have important effects on labor market experiences.... Among the key findings of this research are that educational attainment most affected labor force participation by women and wages of men."

"A new family of migration models belonging to the elimination by aspects family is examined, with the spatial interaction model shown to be a special case. The models have simple forms; they incorporate information flow processes and choice set constraints; they are free of problems raised by the Luce Choice Axiom; and are capable of generating intransitive flows. Preliminary calibrations using the Continuous Work History Sample [time] series data indicate that the model fits the migration data well, while providing estimates of interstate job message flows. The preliminary calculations also indicate that care is needed in assuming that destination [attraction] are independent of origins."

"The concept of the city size distribution is criticized for its lack of consideration of the effects of interurban interdependencies on the growth of cities. Theoretical justifications for the rank-size relationship have the same shortcomings, and an empirical study reveals that there is little correlation between deviations from rank-size distributions and national economic and social characteristics. Thus arguments suggesting a close correspondence between city size distributions and the level of development of a country, irrespective of intranational variations in city location and socioeconomic characteristics, seem to have little foundation." (summary in FRE, ITA, JPN, )

Earlier work (Vining and Kontuly 1978) included a statistical error relating to population movement in North Island, New Zealand. This is now corrected. -M.J.Moseley

"A cohort-component method is used to construct historical annual age/sex disaggregations of total population. In econometric models of six substate areas [in the United States], regressions are estimated with and without the disaggregated data for five model variables expected to be dependent on the size of particular population subgroups. Statistical tests are performed to determine significant differences in residual variance of estimation with and without the disaggregated data. Although age/sex population projections may be a desired model output per se, the results indicate that the population subgroup data generally do not improve estimation of other model variables." (summary in FRE, ITA, JPN, )

"This paper reports on the specification, estimation and simulation of an interregional net migration model of the United States. The model makes use of time series data including, as explanatory variables, wage rates, unemployment rates, and population density. Simulation experiments are undertaken by joining the migration model with a multi-regional macroeconometric model to examine the effect [on] migration patterns of changes in national economic growth. In particular, the net outmigration trends in the Northeast are examined under alternative scenarios including faster national economic growth and a different energy pricing policy."

Birth expectations data frequently are used in population projections. A common assumption in preparing sub-national population projections is that the completed cohort fertility rates of the areas in question will converge over time to a level equivalent to the prevailing average number of lifetime births expected nationally by women in the principal reproductive ages. This paper examines whether such an assumption is justified for the United States. Although there is little supporting evidence for any convergence in state fertility rates for the period 1940 to 1977, birth expectations data for women 18 to 29 years old for 1977 and 1978 indicate a fairly uniform expected family size of two children per woman. The reliability of these expectations data are examined in light of the currently low period fertility rates.

"This article describes the emergent spatial dispersion pattern of the urban system of the Republic of Korea, where the government has instituted a strong decentralization policy. Intraregional decentralization is underway within the core area, while intraregional polarization towards larger regional centers is evident in periphery areas. Through the use of step-wise regression analysis, determinants of the differential growth rates of urban centers in the core and periphery are identified. The different spatial development processes operating in the core and periphery have implications for growth pole theory and regional development planning."

Recent trends in migration in the United States are reviewed, focusing on the links between regional and metropolitan population change. Three explanations for the counterurbanization phenomenon of the 1970s are presented and their implications for future migration trends considered. The author concludes that "while 1970s core region declines may have been strongly linked to the counterurbanization process, post-1980 core region gains do not appear to signal a return to the metropolis."

"Micro-level theories of why households change residence contrast with macro-level approaches that relate the level of spatial mobility to development. This article compares the rate of residential mobility in 16 [developed] countries or other areas and examines both regional variations within countries and changes in rates of local and nonlocal moving. Hypotheses that explain why countries differ in rates of residential mobility are examined."

"With a more thorough examination of population changes in the Tokyo region, this article confirms with regard to Japan the reconcentrating trend of urban population observed more clearly elsewhere by Cochrane and Vining (1988). Through an examination of the factors which led to the turnaround in the 1980s in Japan and elsewhere, it is argued that conservative economic policy, as manifested by deregulation and privatization, is the principal cause for reconcentration of urbanization in the 1980s in the economically advanced Western countries."

"Selected results of a multilevel dynamic simulation model of the economic and demographic development of the urban region of Dortmund [Federal Republic of Germany] are presented. In particular, the capability of the model to capture both urban growth and urban decline processes is illustrated. The mechanisms that control spatial growth, decline, or redistribution of activities in the model are first outlined, and a demonstration of how the model reproduces the general pattern of past spatial development follows. Finally, results of simulations covering a wide range of potential overall economic and demographic development in the region are discussed." (summary in FRE, ITA, JPN, )

"Data from the Malaysian Family Life Survey are used to examine the sensitivity of urban/rural income differentials to the definition and measurement of income. Measured income differentials vary with the extent to which nonmarket activities are included in the scope of income, how the distribution of income is summarized, and whether one adjusts for differences in hours of work, household size and composition, ethnic composition, and other sociodemographic characteristics. For example, depending on the measure chosen, estimates of the amount by which urban income exceeds rural income in Malaysia range from 9 percent to 141 percent."

Of the eighteen countries studied in this paper, eleven (Japan, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Denmark, New Zealand, Belgium, France, West Germany, East Germany, and The Netherlands) show either a reversal in the direction of net population flow from their sparsely populated, peripheral regions to their densely populated core regions or a drastic reduction in the level of this net flow. In the first seven of these eleven countries, this reversal or reduction became evident only in the 1970s; in the last four, its onset was recorded m the 1960s. Six countries (Hungary, Spain, Finland, Poland, South Korea, and Taiwan) have yet to show an attenuation in the movement of persons into their most densely populated regions. Some possibly unreliable British data likewise fail to reveal a slackening in the "drift south" of the British population. Three additional discoveries described in this paper are the following: (1) Migration continues strong into the capital regions of the three Eastern European countries studied here (Poland, Hungary, and East Germany). However, the low natural increase of these regions has blunted their expansion. (2) Though domestic migration into the capital regions of France, Sweden, and Norway has declined dramatically, foreign immigration into these regions remains at a high level. (3) Net domestic migration into the core regions of Sweden, Japan, and Italy, countries separated by vast distances, fluctuate from year to year in a remarkably similar manner.

"An econometric model for forecasting net migration and natural increase is proposed and then estimated using time-series data for Texas. The model is simulated five years out-of-sample and found to be quite accurate in forecasting future population growth. It outperforms simpler prediction methods, thus indicating that explicit modeling of net migration and natural increase is superior to modeling only total population."

This paper describes some results obtained from simulating a computable general equilibrium model calibrated with 1960 data for Japan. Of the two closures used, the Keynesian type, which assumes unutilized resources, performs better than the neoclassical closure, which assumes full employment of all factors of production. In other words, Japanese economic growth in the 1960s may be characterized by the decisions of investors who regarded the supply of quality labor as virtually unlimited. Spatial aspects of population shifts have a significant bearing on macro growth potentials if social capital demands are spatially differentiated.

"An integrated model is proposed to capture economic and demographic interactions in a system of regions. This model links the interregional economic model of Isard (1960) and the interregional demographic model of Rogers (1975) via functions describing consumption and migration patterns. Migration rates are determined jointly with labor force participation rates and unemployment rates."

"This article demonstrates that sectoral employment shifts associated with the migration pattern changes of the 1970s are very different than those for the period 1955-60 to 1965-70. Changing competitiveness for jobs in manufacturing and other traditional basic sectors of the economy cannot account for the greatly accelerated levels of core-periphery net outflow that have been the dominant characteristic of interstate movement during the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, an interconnected set of activities that includes government, services, trade, and construction is associated with the broadscale shifts in the geographic pattern of the United States' population. The causal linkage from migration to employment change assumed heightened importance during the 1970s."