Suchergebnisse

Substantiated knowledge of future demographic changes that is derived from sound statistical and mathematical methods is a crucial determinant of regional planning. Of the components of demographic developments, migration shapes regional demographics the most over the short term. However, despite its importance, existing approaches model future regional migration based on deterministic assumptions that do not sufficiently account for its highly probabilistic nature. In response to this shortcoming in the literature, our paper uses age- and gender-specific migration data for German NUTS-3 regions over the 1995–2019 period and compares the performance of a variety of forecasting models in backtests. Using the bestperforming model specification and drawing on Monte Carlo simulations, we present a stochastic forecast of regional migration dynamics across German regions until 2040 and analyze their role in regional depopulation. The results provide evidence that well-known age-specific migration patterns across the urban-rural continuum of regions, such as the education-induced migration of young adults, are very likely to persist, and to continue to shape future regional (de)population dynamics.

Since 2013, more than two million refugees have arrived in Germany and have been allocated across federal states and districts according to legal policies. A steadily increasing number of refugees is now entering the German labor market, albeit under varying economic and demographic contexts. However, regional differences in refugees' labor market integration have received little attention both retrospectively and particularly prospectively, given the projected population decline across Germany. Addressing this apparent shortcoming in the literature, we collect data on refugee arrivals by gender, nationality, approval rates, and regional allocation from 1995 to 2019. Applying principal component analysis and time series analysis, we first analyze past patterns of refugee migration to Germany and project both arrivals and regional allocations by gender and nationality until 2030. Then, combining the collected migration figures for German labor market regions and official labor market statistics, we investigate past regional employment effects from 2008 to 2019. Next, we calculate corresponding future employment effects conditional on our projected refugee figures, our estimation results, and official regional demographic forecasts until 2030. Our findings suggest that refugee migration does not affect German labor market regions equally, but instead has and will continue to lead to distinct regional employment effects. Moreover, the labor market integration differs by gender and origin of the refugees. Consequently, the interaction of regional employment effects with projected population change gives rise to different regional mitigation potentials in view of the upcoming population decline.

Die zukünftige Entwicklung der lokalen oder regionalen Bevölkerung ist für kommunale Planungen von großer Bedeutung. Diese zentrale Rolle erfordert, dass kleinräumige Bevölkerungsprojektionen auf entsprechend valider Methodik beruhen. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt einen Überblick zu ebensolchen methodischen Ansätzen und spiegelt diese mit Erfahrungsberichten aus der kommunalen Planung. Dabei werden die Herausforderungen und Potenziale, die in der Umsetzung kleinräumiger Bevölkerungsprojektionen zu finden sind, illustrativ diskutiert. Der Beitrag leitet daraus Empfehlungen ab, wie eine bessere Informationsbasis für kleinräumige Bevölkerungsprojektionen aussehen könnte und wie sich die Projektionen methodisch ausbauen ließen.