Urban-to-rural population growth linkages : evidence from OECD TL3 regions

The objective of this paper is to better understand how the population growth rates of rural regions are affected by their closeness to urban regions and by the economic performance of the latter. By means of a cross-sectional analysis of OECD TL3 regions, it identifies the growth spillover effects from the net effect of distance to non-rural places. Distance-based measures are used to approximate the extent to which urban and rural areas are integrated in relational terms. Results shows that positive growth spillovers exist, suggesting that spread effects overcome backwash effects and thus that rural regions benefit from the growth process taking place in urban and intermediate regions. After having controlled for these growth spillovers, the distance from urban and intermediate regions has a negative effect on the population growth rate of rural regions. Nevertheless, both the strength of this effect and the growth spillovers decay with distance. Results further suggest that proximity to urban areas has higher positive influence than to intermediate areas.