Demographic ageing and rural population change

Abstract

This chapter aims to describe the ageing of rural populations. Population ageing is the increase in the average age of a country’s or region’s population as a whole, which occurs when its birth rates decline, its life expectancy increases and elders and youth move into or out of the place. The chapter describes the demographic processes behind ageing. The ageing of a population comes about as a function of the three fundamental demographic variables: births, deaths and migration, of which, interestingly, birth rates are the most important. Life expectancy tends to be associated with rurality in that when the overall health of a population is good, persons live longer. The ageing process is strikingly described using population pyramids. Ageing in rural places is influenced by low fertility combined with the out-migration of youth who leave elders behind, or, by the in-migration of relatively well-off elders to high amenity rural places.