Exploring the Role of Age Structure in Regional Population Change of the Visegrad Group

József Lennert, ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies
Csaba G. Tóth , ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies

A caveat of much demographic research is that it decomposes population change into fertility, mortality, and migration, treating ageing merely as a consequence of these components while overlooking the role of the initial age structure in shaping population dynamics. This study applies a scenario-based decomposition using the stable population model to disentangle the separate contributions of fertility, mortality, net migration, and initial age structure to population change. This approach captures spillover effects over time and across demographic factors, offering a more comprehensive understanding of the drivers of change and explicitly identifying the direct impact of the initial age structure. The analysis examines population change at the NUTS-2 level across the Visegrád Group countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) between 2001 and 2023. Two main questions guide the study: (1) do regional demographic trajectories primarily reflect national-level dynamics, or do cross-border similarities also emerge? and (2) what additional insights arise from quantifying the role of initial age structure? The results show that regional differences cannot be explained solely by national-level variation, as cross-border clusters are also identifiable. Moreover, the initial age structure proves to be an independent and essential explanatory factor of population heterogeneity. Metropolitan regions such as Prague and Budapest illustrate how relatively old age compositions partly offset the population-increasing effect of net migration. From a policy perspective, while migration remains the most direct lever to mitigate regional population decline, the results highlight the need to account for the independent and evolving role of age structure.

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 Presented in Session P8. Demographic Trends, History, Data and Methods