Understanding the Trajectories of Population Decline Across Rural and Urban Europe: A Sequence Analysis

Our paper acknowledges the projected reversal of European population growth and the diversity of population trajectories amongst sub-national areas across the continent. Though population decline in Europe is a recognised phenomenon, its spatial and temporal dynamics are considerably less developed. We use annual population count estimate data to understand the various trajectories of sub-national population decline across rural and urban Europe. To this end, we apply a novel methodology in sequence analysis. We identify a typology of population decline distinguishing seven distinct pathways to depopulation and chart their geographies, highlighting differentiated patterns of population decline across the rural-urban continuum.