Overview of Public Policies against depopulation
Adrian Palaciosprofessor , Department of Applied Economics of the University of Zaragoza – the entity in charge of the package of policies in the framework of the project SPANDAM – takes a look at this article on national and international experiences in dealing with the fight against depopulation. Tax incentives, investment in infrastructure or transport, provision of services... are some of the examples that for decades have been implemented and studied to ensure that the model SPANDAM has good quality.
Depopulation is one of the biggest challenges facing many regions of the worldespecially those that are located in rural or remote areas. The decrease of the population can have significant consequences for the economy, the environment, the culture and the society in general. Therefore, in the regions concerned, depopulation has become an important field in which governments are developing public policies. To continue with the development of the tool SPANDAM, we have studied how public policies have been developed.
A GLOBAL VISION
As a general rule, the public policies against depopulation have attempted to address the lack of employment and economic opportunities, the lack of public and private services, the lack of adequate infrastructure, lack of affordable housing or the aging of the population, among others.
In this way, the promotion of economic development in the regions affected by depopulation has been one of the key strategies developed by public entities. This has included tax incentives to attract new businesses and jobs to the region, as well as training programmes and funding to help small local businesses grow and expand.
Have also been developed policies to improve the infrastructure of transport and communications, which will facilitate access to public and private services and improve the connectivity of the region with other parts of the country.
Similarly, ensure access to basic services qualityas medical care, education and affordable housing has also been one of the key elements developed in the public policies against depopulation. To achieve this, we have encouraged investment in infrastructure and resources, as well as the consideration of innovative solutions such as telemedicine and online education.
Scope international
At the international level the depopulation as a phenomenon that face has been addressed by public policies from decades ago. For example, episodes continued decline in the population in certain regions or rural municipalities, due to an emigration country-city, have taken him to countries such as Japan to focus on the improvement of the infrastructure or the provision of services to curb the depopulation. In particular, the asian country has developed a policy of direct financial aid to municipalities rural depopulation in order to develop, modernize and create public infrastructure and ensure the provision of services.
On the other hand, a decrease widespread in the population, caused by a fall in birth rates, has driven many countries to try to curb the depopulation encouraging the birth. These are the cases of countries such as Sweden or Australia where, from the second half of the TWENTIETH century, a series of policies have increased the support for paternity/maternity and direct subsidies for having children.
In turn, other countries, as Scotlandthey have focused on the promotion of the economic activities or the attraction of migration to rural environments in depopulation to improve the employment opportunities and economic, and brake in this way, the fall in population.
National Level
However, although it is important to see how governments in the international arena have acted before the demographic challenge, the project SPANDAM demand to have a more national in order to adapt the national experiences of the developed model. In this regard, we have found two types of policies developed by various governments at the national level.
First, those policies that have been developed in order to relate to the provision of services with the phenomenon of depopulation. That is to say, those public services such as education, health or infrastructure that have been affected in certain localities by depopulation, these policies have tried to configure these services to adapt to these new scenarios.
For example, here we would have the reconfiguration of the provision of services in small towns so that they can provide services to their charge (garbage collection...) through the binding with other municipalities. Of the same shape and similar to what we experienced in Japan, have developed policies to improve the infrastructure and the connections to the remote areas and depopulation, to facilitate access to services.
On the other hand, we have those policies that seek to address the depopulation of a direct way. Here, we would be faced with direct incentives, or tax, which seek to promote certain behaviors of the population to reverse the phenomenon of depopulation. In this case, we would have, for example, payments to have a baby or aid for the purchase of housing in small towns.
However, the majority of the public policies developed in Spain and analyzed in the report have had the disadvantage of being recent application, or you have not been yet applied. This has made it difficult to analyze how they have affected to the depopulation of these policies. The cases of Sweden or Australia, where policies supportive of the birth were applied to the middle of the second half of the TWENTIETH century, have shown that it is necessary to the long-term to understand and correctly evaluate the effect of public policies against depopulation.
Therefore, although policies that take decades to apply, as are the LEADER programmes, have been able to be evaluated, the recent and important wave of public policies developed in Spain to fight against depopulation (as of Galicia with the Anteproxecto Lei Impulse Population of Galicia , the Castilla-La Mancha two thousand twenty one Law 2/2021, May 7, of the Economic, Social, and Tax compared to the Depopulation and for the Development of Ruralor Aragon two thousand twenty two Guidelines and Bill of revitalization of the rural areas of Aragon, 12 April 2022), only have been rated content and potential reach of the same.
In conclusion, the work performed from SPANDAM has helped us to have a perspective on how governments have addressed the depopulation in the last decades, key information for the development of the simulation tool SPANDAM.
