Abstract
The long-term impact of demographic transitions on the spatial distribution of human settlements was occasionally evaluated in Europe. Assuming the distinctive role of urban–rural divides, our study investigates local-scale population trends (1861–2017) in Southern Italy, a disadvantaged region of Mediterranean Europe, as a result of long-term socioeconomic transformations. A quantitative analysis of municipal-scale population data based on descriptive and exploratory multivariate statistics, mapping, inferential approaches, and regression models identified four time intervals with distinctive demographic dynamics: (i) a spatially homogeneous population growth between 1861 and 1911, (ii) a moderate population increase rebalancing a traditional divide in coastal and internal areas (1911–1951), (iii) accelerated population growth enlarging spatial divides in urban and rural districts (1951–1981), and (iv) population stability (or slight decline) leading to heterogeneous demographic patterns since the early 1980s. The first three stages reflect a prolonged transition from high fertility and mortality to high fertility and low mortality, with accelerated population growth typical of the latest stage of the first demographic transition. Outcomes of time interval (iv) reflect the early stages of the second demographic transition, with lowest-low fertility and rising life expectancy. While the first transition reflected spatially homogeneous population trends along a considerable time spam, the second transition has been associated with heterogeneous (leapfrog) demographic patterns as a result of socially mixed (and spatially) fragmented dynamics of growth and change.
Highlights
Demographic transitions have leveraged socioeconomic changes impacting settlement dynamics and stimulating a complete spatial restructuring of countries and regions, especially in advanced economies [1,2,3,4]
Additional variables were considered with the aim to profile the local context in each municipality of Southern Italy [42]: (i) average municipal elevation, (ii) proximity to the sea coastline (‘Sea’, a dummy variable assigning a value of 1 to coastal municipalities and 0 to internal municipalities), (iii–vii) five dummies capturing distinctive population trends in the largest regions of Southern Italy (‘Campania’, ‘Apulia’, ‘Calabria’, ‘Sicily’, and ‘Sardinia’), and (viii) a variable controlling for the possible influence of municipal size on population dynamics (‘Area’, km2 )
Results of our study demonstrate the substantial distinctiveness of spatial population trends during the first and the second demographic transitions
Summary
Demographic transitions have leveraged (and are in turn influenced by) socioeconomic changes impacting settlement dynamics and stimulating a complete spatial restructuring of countries and regions, especially in advanced economies [1,2,3,4]. At the end of the historical decline in both mortality and fertility, characteristic of the last stage of the first transition, new socio-demographic phenomena were observed in advanced economies of the Western World, representing a completely different shift toward new population patterns [12,13,14] In this context, the so-called ‘second demographic transition’ attempted to explain features such as the baby bust, the systematic postponement of marriage and parenthood, sub-replacement fertility, the rise of alternative forms of partnerships, and parenthood outside marriage [15]. While micro-scale implications of demographic transitions in advanced economies (e.g., changes in individual behaviors) have been analyzed over time, spatial outcomes as far as long-term population trends are concerned have been investigated more occasionally in Mediterranean Europe.
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