Population decline and ageing in Spanish capital cities
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Abstract
Population decline and ageing do not only affect rural areas. The aim of this paper is to analyze the demographic trends of the 50 Spanish capital cities from 2002 to 2019. We create clusters of growing, stable and declining cities according to the economic growth period 2014-2019. We then analyze the contribution of natural growth and different types of migration to the growth rate. Finally, we measure the population change by age over time. For this research, a demographic analysis approach has been applied using register microdata from the Spanish Statistical Office-Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE). Our results show a new trend of population decline in 15 Spanish capital cities, 7 of them in the periphery region of Castile and León. While suburbanization was the most important factor of population shrinkage before the 2008 economic crisis, out-migration of young populations to the global Spanish cities and negative natural growth are currently the main components of demographic decline. These shrinking cities have also been receiving fewer migrants from abroad and rural areas, while observing an increase in their ageing population and a decrease in their female population between the ages 15 and 49. Meanwhile, the number of inhabitants in the 11 major capital cities has been rising due to the increase in international immigration since 2014, as it was before 2008, and to a lesser extent by internal migration from other Spanish cities.