Project description

Population aging, defined as an increasing proportion of people age 65 and above, is a general and inevitable demographic trend in postindustrial societies caused by declining mortality, increased longevity and in many cases declining fertility. Aging has a number of socioeconomic implications both at the national and local levels of social organization, including its impact on further demographic change, elderly well-being and poverty, community development and economic growth. Moreover, similarly to most demographic phenomena, aging also occurs unevenly in space, and it is interlinked with other forms of spatial inequalities.

Population aging has two main components. One is aging in place, which means that more and more people survive to ages 65 and above due to increased longevity, and the other is retirement migration when recent retirees move to particular regions and places based on residential preferences. Research in the US showed that retirement destinations are not evenly spread out in rural America, but rather concentrate in high amenity regions (Johnson and Beale, 2002). Also, retirement migration often induces more general migration because the demand from high-income retirees for particular services creates a magnet for employment-driven inmigration (Glasgow and Brown, 2005). This is the great paradox of geographic heterogeneity: regions with aging population do not necessarily match with those that serve as retirement destinations.

While there is a significant scholarship on the challenges and trends of aging in rural America, much less has been written about the same phenomenon in Eastern Europe. The most comprehensive work on contemporary Eastern European demographics, written by Tomas Kucera and his colleagues (Kucera et al, 2000) has indications of the process of aging itself, but does not discuss its policy implications, let alone putting this change into a comparative sociodemographic perspective. Seemingly, Eastern Europe's population is rapidly aging, converging to the general European trend, and the high fertility of the state socialist period has long disappeared. Also, Eastern Europe does not have significant retirement migration streams. Hence, aging is basically aging in place.

This project seeks to identify the characteristics of population aging in rural Eastern Europe, taking Romania and Bulgaria as case study countries. The goal is to demonstrate how local socioeconomic characteristics, including development legacies and local cultures, influence the policy challenges of aging. Hence, the research questions are the following: (1) what are the basic sociodemographic trends of aging in the region; (2) what are the social norms, roles and collective behavior patterns associated with aging; (3) what are the most important policy challenges induced by aging?

 Based on various seed grants from Kansas State University, we started the statistical analysis and the case studies. Four case study sites were identified, two in Romania and two in Bulgaria. The case studies will consist of non-participant observation, community profiles and interviews with key informants. The Bulgarian fieldwork has been completed, and the Romanian fieldwork is expected to be completed in March 2007. Research results will be published during the summer of 2007.

References

• Glasgow, N. and D. L. Brown (2005) “Social Integration Among Older Inmigrants.” Pp. 177-196 in W. Kandel and D.L. Brown (eds.) Population Change and Rural Society. Dordrecht: Springer.
• Johnson, Kenneth and Calvin Beale (2002) Nonmetro Recreation Counties. Their Identification and Rapid Growth. Rural America, Vol. 17, no. 4.
• Kucera, Tomas et al. (eds.) (2000) New Demographic Faces of Europe: The Changing Population Dynamics in Countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Springer, Heidelberg.
  

Collaborators on the field

Bulgaria: Daniel Pavlov (University of Rousse)
Romania: Anca Clipa (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University)