Abstract
The post-communist transition to market economy in Central Europe over the last decade of the twentieth century had a significant impact on the demographic profile of the former Soviet bloc countries. Largely due to government policy and market conditions related to housing, this observation is particularly true for the Czech Republic. The present study shows housing as a facet of regional demographic differences within the Czech Republic. The household composition matrix is applied here as a demographic gauge to the behavioral response of households to Czech housing markets and policy. The matrix provides here a glance at households’ demographic behavior in the capital city of Prague and in the country’s other regions, during the early transition period, based on observations from the 1991 census. A summary feature of household composition is the age-specific household size shown for the various regions of the Czech Republic to trace the reduced standard Gamma function. Anomalies detected in the trajectory of age-specific household size for Prague confirm the unique housing market conditions in the capital city, and point to a commensurate demographic response in Prague as opposed to the rest of the country.
Highlights
The recent expansion of the European Union has evoked considerable debate as to the management of economic, social and cultural equity issues within each of the EU accession countries in the former Soviet bloc of Central and Eastern Europe (Kancs, 2001)
The tabular representation associated with household composition provides the basis for a conceptual framework in which community demography, reflected in household composition, is linked to housing
The purpose of the present study was to examine the demographic notion of household composition as a gauge of regional disparity within the Czech Republic
Summary
The recent expansion of the European Union has evoked considerable debate as to the management of economic, social and cultural equity issues within each of the EU accession countries in the former Soviet bloc of Central and Eastern Europe (Kancs, 2001). Among the East- and Central-European accession countries, the Czech Republic has been considered one of the strongest. Regional disparity within the Czech Republic, is an issue that far exceeds its own geographical confines. Regional disparity within the geographical area referred to today as the Czech Republic has been overshadowed by the much more evident inequity between Slovakia and the Czech lands within the former Czechoslovakia. Inequity has been seen as a major sticking point between the two geopolitical partners within Czechoslovakia, and a formative issue in the emergence of the Czech Republic and Slovakia as independent states in 1993. The struggle for resources and development between the Czech lands and Slovakia in the period 1918 - 1992, had occurred within the democratic Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938, 19451948), within the communist state labeled initially, from 1948 till 1961, as the Czechoslovak Republic, and as the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.. The ‘Velvet Divorce’ that took effect on January 1, 1993, sanctioned the ultimate break-up of Czechoslovakia into the independent Czech Republic and Slovakia
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