Workshop B: Aging, shrinking regions and access to services

1. Workshop B: Aging, shrinking regions and access to services Moderator: Simin Davoudi Chair: Michaela Gensheimer Reporter: Didier Michal ESPON Seminar Evora, 11-13 Nov. 2007

2. Key Socio-economic challenges • Shrinking workforce (11) • shortage of skilled labour • both high and low skilled labour is needed • Productivity ≠ immigration • Shrinking does not necessarily means decline in the long run • why do regions are attracting high or low skilled labour? • Late entry to and early exit from the labour market (2) • Squeeze of workforce particularly among higher socio-economic groups • Rising dependency ratio (1) • longer working hours, higher taxes

3. Key socio-economic challenges • Growing number of older people (0) • raising the cost of health care and pension • The ‘Ageing Europe’ (5) • putting pressure on the European social model and welfare provision • ‘Grey’ voting power (2) • shifting public spending away from nurseries and schools to health care and retirement homes, • blocking reform to retirement age and pension schemes

4. Key socio-economic challenges • Social differentiation among older people (2) • poverty and isolation among some who mainly live in urban areas using distance care packages versus • luxury life among others living in large houses with ‘carer quarters’, in retirement destinations • Immigration (6) • both internal and external immigration (statistics not very performing) • response to demographic restructuring • increase in the cost of integration (employment, housing, crime, health care and education) • social and cultural tensions

5. Key territorial challenges • Differentiated patterns of demographic change (11) • east / west, centre / periphery, south / north, urban / rural divisions • countries with highest level of ageing population versus • countries with youngest population • Concentration of immigration from outside Europe in large and mainly capital cities (2)

6. Key territorial challenges • Different territorial destinations forintra-European migration (5) • affluent retirees moving from north to south and Mediterranean regions, • east European workers searching for job in western European countries

7. Key territorial challenges • Meso level territorial differentiation (6) metropolitanisation, depopulation and counter-urbanisation • Growing population in metropolitan areas both in western and eastern Europe versus • Depopulation of rural areas in eastern and western peripheries, central part of Germany, central and north Italy • Shrinking regions with declining basic services

8. Key territorial challenges • Micro level spatial segregation (0) • Affluent older people moving to rural areas with lower crime rates, good access to health services and pleasant climate versus • lower income older people remaining in urban areas

9. Key territorial challenges • Family policies (1) • Fertility (2) • Conditions for women (2) • Combination of natural evolution (total fertility rate) and migration (1) • Lower tier cities attractivity (1) • Balanced population settlement (1) • Problem of models to analyse decline (1)

10. conclusions • ESPON should give the evidence and let the decisions maker do their job • ESPON should be selective when choosing the research topics (geographical or thematic selectivity) • Topics have to be studied from the territorial point of view