Delft University of Technology
Population Decline in Lithuania
Who Lives in Declining Regions and Who Leaves?
Ubareviciene, Ruta; van Ham, Maarten
Publication date
2016
Document Version
Final published version
Citation (APA)
Ubarevičienė, R., & van Ham, M. (2016). Population Decline in Lithuania: Who Lives in Declining Regions
and Who Leaves? (IZA Discussion Paper No. 10160). Bonn: Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit/
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
Important note
To cite this publication, please use the final published version (if applicable).
Please check the document version above.
Copyright
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent
of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Takedown policy
Please contact us and provide details if you believe this document breaches copyrights.
We will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
This work is downloaded from Delft University of Technology.
For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to a maximum of 10.
Forschungsinstitut
zur Zukunft der Arbeit
Institute for the Study
of Labor
DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES
Population Decline in Lithuania:
Who Lives in Declining Regions and Who Leaves?
IZA DP No. 10160
August 2016
Rūta Ubarevičienė
Maarten van Ham
Population Decline in Lithuania:
Who Lives in Declining Regions
and Who Leaves?
Rūta Ubarevičienė
Delft University of Technology
and Lithuanian Social Research Centre
Maarten van Ham
Delft University of Technology
and IZA
Discussion Paper No. 10160
August 2016
IZA
P.O. Box 7240
53072 Bonn
Germany
Phone: +49-228-3894-0
Fax: +49-228-3894-180
E-mail: iza@iza.org
Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in
this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions.
The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity.
The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center
and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit
organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of
Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and
conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i)
original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of
policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public.
IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion.
Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be
available directly from the author.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 10160
August 2016
ABSTRACT
Population Decline in Lithuania:
Who Lives in Declining Regions and Who Leaves?
*
Since the 1990s, Lithuania lost almost a quarter of its population, and some regions within
the country lost more than 50% of their residents. Such a sharp population decline poses
major challenges to politicians, policy makers and planners. This study aims to get more
insight into the recent processes of socio-spatial change and the role of selective migration in
Lithuania. The main focus is on understanding who lives in those regions which are rapidly
losing population, and who is most likely to leave these regions. This is one of the first
studies to use individual level Lithuanian census data from 2001 and 2011. We found that
low socio-economic status residents and older residents dominate the population of shrinking
regions, and unsurprisingly we found that the most “successful” people are the most likely to
leave such regions. This process of selective migration reinforces the negative downward
spiral of declining regions. As a result, socio-spatial polarisation is growing within the country,
where people with higher socio-economic status are increasingly overrepresented in the
largest city-regions, while the elderly and residents with a lower socioeconomic status are
overrepresented in declining rural regions. This paper provides empirical evidence of
selective migration and increasing regional disparities in Lithuania. While the socio-spatial
changes are obvious in Lithuania, there is no clear strategy on how to cope with extreme
population decline and increasing regional inequalities within the country.
JEL Classification: R23, O15, J11, P20
Keywords: population decline, shrinking regions, internal migration,
socio-spatial polarisation, Lithuania
Corresponding author:
Rūta Ubarevičienė
OTB - Research for the Built Environment
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Delft University of Technology
PO Box 5030
2600 GA Delft
The Netherlands
E-mail: ruta.ubareviciene@gmail.com
*
The research leading to these results has received funding from the Marie Curie programme under
the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007‐2013)/Career Integration [Grant No.
PCIG10‐ GA‐2011‐303728] (CIG Grant NBHCHOICE, Neighbourhood choice, neighbourhood sorting,
and neighbourhood effects).
2
INTRODUCTION
In the last decades, many developed countries are confronted with regional population decline
(Haartsen and Venhorst 2010; Haase, Athanasopoulou, and Rink 2016; Hospers 2012; Reher 2004).
There is increasing attention for the causes and consequences of these so-called “shrinking regions”,
which is reflected in media attention and in academic and political debates (Sousa and Pinho 2015).
These debates largely portray declining regions as deteriorating and problematic and emphasise the
need to counter the population decline.
Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries are losing population at the national level, and
at some of the highest rates in the world. Generally speaking there is little attention for policies and
measures to deal with population decline. Lithuania is currently one of the countries with the strongest
population decline in the world. In a quarter of a century, since the early 1990s, Lithuania lost almost
a quarter of its residents. Some regions lost more than 50% of their residents. Such a strong decrease
in population, not seen in any Western European country, was the result of the combined effects of
major political, economic and social transitions. Large scale emigration, natural population decline
and changing residential mobility patterns caused the socio-spatial landscape of Lithuania to change
in a fast and dramatic way.
The pattern of population change in Lithuania shows a concentration of population in the
metropolitan areas and a sharp decline in peripheral rural regions (Ubarevičienė, van Ham, and
Burneika 2016). It has been shown that internal migration plays a major role in the processes of
population redistribution and growing spatial imbalances (Ambinakudige and Parisi 2015;
Ubarevičienė 2016). However, little is known about the directions of migration flows within
Lithuania as well as the demographic and socio-economic composition of such flows. Knowing that
migration tends to be selective by nature (Fratesi and Percoco 2013; Tervo 2000), it can be expected
that the population leaving declining regions in Lithuania is very selective as well. The extreme
population decline in some regions of Lithuania and the growth of population in others can be
expected to result in increasing regional differences. These differences might endanger the stability
of society and the economy.
This paper seeks to get more insight into the recent processes of socio-spatial change in
Lithuania, with specific attention for the role of selective migration. While the focus is on Lithuania,
the results of this study will also be of value for other CEE countries, many of which experienced
similar trajectories during recent decades. This paper will investigate the characteristics of those 1)
who live in the rapidly declining regions, and 2) those who are most likely to leave such regions. We
will also investigate the effects of regional characteristics on population mobility. In this study we
are focusing on those regions which experienced the sharpest population decline (-20% and more)
during the 2001-2011 period. This study is one of the first to use individual-level Lithuanian Census
data from the years 2001 and 2011 and is also the first to explore internal migration and population
change on the individual level in Lithuania. Logistic regression models were used to investigate the
differences between the residents of the rapidly declining regions
1
and the rest of the country as well
as to gain an understanding of the individual differences in migration behaviour among the residents
of the rapidly declining regions.
1
In this paper sometimes when using terms “declining” or “shrinking” we refer to “rapidly declining regions”.