Regional growth in Central Europe: Long-term effects of population and traffic structure

In a simple growth model we explore the current and future growth effects of the regional population structure. Regional GDP growth in 227 regions within six countries in central Europe is explored as how they depend on the young and old dependency ratio. The young dependency ratio (YDR) is defined as ratio of the less than 20 years old and the old dependency ratio (ODR) as the more than 60 years old divided by the total population. We found a medium sized negative correlation of these ratios on regional growth and the long-term forecasts for the year 2020 are for most regions rather negative if only the population structure is considered. Similar scenarios can be also obtained for employment and population growth. The long-term forecasts improve if traffic accessibilities and dynamic interactions are introduced into the model.