INTER‐REGIONAL POPULATION DISTRIBUTION AND GROWTH IN BRITAIN –A PROJECTION EXERCISE*
| Published date | 01 June 1974 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1974.tb00186.x |
| Date | 01 June 1974 |
| Author | G. Joseph |
Scottish
Journal
of Political Economy
Vol.
XXI.
No.
2,
June 1974
INTER-REGIONAL POPULATION
DISTRIBUTION AND GROWTH IN
BRITAIN-A PROJECTION EXERCISE*
G.
JOSEPH
Two separable influences
can
be
discerned in the growth of regional popula-
tions within a
'
closed
'
inter-regional population system.' First, there
operates the forces of fertility and mortality which, given that all regions
are in the same stage of demographic transition and there is
no
significant
variation in the age/sex composition of the regional populations, affect
the size
and
composition of these populations in a similar way.2 Second,
there are additions and reductions due to internal movement of people
which may be viewed as a mechanism by which people adapt themselves
to geographical differences and to temporal changes in patterns of economic
opportunity and living conditions.
It
is this influence which makes regional
population forecasting such a difficult exercise. For there are
a
whole
set of factors affecting inter-regional migration process, the major ones being
demographic characteristics such as age, sex and marital status; economic
characteristics associated with regional income differentials, employment
status and occupational structure; sociological characteristics associated
with the strength of family and communal ties with a particular area; and
availability and cost of living accommodation. The difficulty of incorporat-
ing these and other numerous and diverse variables into a single model
seeking
to
explain inter-regional migration process,
is
obvious.
The present study makes
no
claims to accuracy in predicting the future
trends in the regional populations in this country. It uses the theory of
Markov Chains to formulate a stochastic model
of
inter-regional migration
in Britain and then makes short and long-term projections of the regional
population under certain restrictive ass~mptions.~ The data for
this
exercise
is obtained from published sources of the 1961 Population Census and
1966 Sample Census. Information is available from the 1966 Census Migra-
tion Tables
(Vol.
I)
on
the number of individuals of each sex aged
5
and
over who changed their usual residence from each one of the
ten
standard
*I
am grateful to Christine Moore for computer programming assistance and
Anne Bennett for undertaking many of the tedious calculations
needed
in
this study.
I
am also indebted to
R.
A.
Hart for his helpful comments on this paper. However,
the usual disclaimer follows.
1
'
Closed
'
to external migration.
2While it is reasonable to assume that all British regions are in the same stage
of
demographic transition, some variation in the agelsex composition
of
the regional
populations
is
evident even from a cursory examination of relevant census data.
JThis study owes much to the methodological content of
two
articles (Tarver
and Gurley,
1965,
pp.
134-139;
Rogers,
1966,
pp.
537-544).
The basic source of
reference for Markov theory is Kemeny and Snell
(1960,
pp.
191-200).
159
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