Geographia Polonica (1988) vol. 54

Zbigniew Rykiel, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakowskie Przedmieście 30, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland

Abstract

The last two decades have brought an intensive development of various demo-graphic models and thereby an increased interest in the data concerning all the demographic phenomena. Simultaneously, one could observe a tendency towards comparative studies on the results obtained in different countries, with different models and on the basis of diverse data. It is on these grounds that there grew a broad research program, carried out within the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) under the leadership of A. Rogers and in collaboration with several dozens of scientists from almost twenty countries. The key to the successful implementation of the program was the adoption of the unified methodology, described in Rogers (1975), i.e. the so-called Rogers model, as well as the application of the widely available program packages (Willekens and Rogers 1978). In spite of unified methodology "... comparabi-lity is, however, severly handicapped by the considerable degree of incomparability of the input data, in particular the migration data." (Rees and Willekens 1981, p.73). This incomparability resulted from different ways of data collection (registration data versus census data) and from differences in the periods for which data were collected.The work presented is an effort at performing a comparative analysis of the results obtained by the Rogers model when two types of migratory data are fed into this model. The analysis was conducted for the three following aspects: (1) mobility patterns of population represented by raw data were compared, (2) results of the Rogers model for two data types were compared, (3) the usefulness of the data on these two types for forecasting purposes was assessed. The hypothesis was adopted, according to which the two data types, used to generate — in the projections — spatial distribution and population structure settings, display specific features.It should be emphasized that the main goal of the work presented is the study of the influence exerted by methods of measuring migration, and not of the migratory behaviour patterns. In view of the methodological nature of this work it was decided to limit the number of regions considered, so as to simplify the making of comparisons. Basing on such assumptions the study concentrated on two regions: urban and rural. Projections were produced separately for women and for the whole of the population, with disaggregation into 18 five — year age groups.

Zbigniew Rykiel, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakowskie Przedmieście 30, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland

Abstract

The last two decades have brought an intensive development of various demo-graphic models and thereby an increased interest in the data concerning all the demographic phenomena. Simultaneously, one could observe a tendency towards comparative studies on the results obtained in different countries, with different models and on the basis of diverse data. It is on these grounds that there grew a broad research program, carried out within the International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA) under the leadership of A. Rogers and in collaboration with several dozens of scientists from almost twenty countries. The key to the successful implementation of the program was the adoption of the unified methodology, described in Rogers (1975), i.e. the so-called Rogers model, as well as the application of the widely available program packages (Willekens and Rogers 1978). In spite of unified methodology "... comparabi-lity is, however, severly handicapped by the considerable degree of incomparability of the input data, in particular the migration data." (Rees and Willekens 1981, p.73). This incomparability resulted from different ways of data collection (registration data versus census data) and from differences in the periods for which data were collected.The work presented is an effort at performing a comparative analysis of the results obtained by the Rogers model when two types of migratory data are fed into this model. The analysis was conducted for the three following aspects: (1) mobility patterns of population represented by raw data were compared, (2) results of the Rogers model for two data types were compared, (3) the usefulness of the data on these two types for forecasting purposes was assessed. The hypothesis was adopted, according to which the two data types, used to generate — in the projections — spatial distribution and population structure settings, display specific features.It should be emphasized that the main goal of the work presented is the study of the influence exerted by methods of measuring migration, and not of the migratory behaviour patterns. In view of the methodological nature of this work it was decided to limit the number of regions considered, so as to simplify the making of comparisons. Basing on such assumptions the study concentrated on two regions: urban and rural. Projections were produced separately for women and for the whole of the population, with disaggregation into 18 five — year age groups.

Marek Kupiszewski [m.kupisz@twarda.pan.pl], Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences, Twarda 51/55, 00‑818 Warszawa, Poland

Abstract

In the past years, studies on human spatial mobility has benefited from the greater availablity of aggregate data. Research on mobility has been broadly concerned with the estimation of migration flows, the identification of migration propensities by age, sex and other characteristics, and with explanation migration by economic and social determinants. This approach has yielded useful results, but it has also raised some new questions. One of the most important regularities observed in human migration is its relationship to age. This may be attributed to the relationship of age to other characteristics of migrants and to other aspects of the family life-cycle and work (Courgeau 1985, p. 139). As statistical schedules of the general structures of population according to the rates of age-specific fertility or mortality demonstrate, that remarkably persistent regularities are characteristic of most human populations. In demographic terminology they are known as hypothetical model schedules. Contrary to well-deve-loped model schedules applied in analyses of fertility and mortality, similar techniques have not yet been applied in migration studies. A. Rogers and L. Castro (1981, 1985) have used those techniques, borrowing them from analyses of fertility and mortality, and applying in their most recent studies, to the modelling of migration schedules. The authors use the notion of a multi-regional model and concentrate upon the development of families of schedules according to age. Model migration schedules have been applied in a number of countries (Rogers and Castro 1985). Model migration schedules may be used to graduate observed migration data to derive summary measures for comparative analysis. They may also be used for interpretation with respect to age intervals of observed migration, to assess the reliability of empirical migration data, and to resolve problems caused by incomplete data (Drewe 1985). However, this question requires a detailed analysis and an assessment of the complexity of migration and the various forms of interdependence and possibilities for applying those models. In the light of the above remarks, it seems advisable to apply synthetic models of hypothetical migration schedules in Polish conditions on the basis of available stasistical data. In Poland, model migration schedules were primarily used to assess the temporal stability of age-and sex-specific migration (Potrykowska 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986).

Alina Potrykowska, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakowskie Przedmieście 30, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland

Abstract

The depopulation of rural areas, its speed and scale as a demographic process depends on the level of the economic development of the country and on the current economic policy, and in particular on the agricultural policy. The phenomena of rural depopulation appear in the territories of some voivodships in the western and northern areas of Poland, as well as in central and eastern Poland. Although the decrease of rural population in absolute numbers had been previously observed in some regions of the country, it was not, initially, regarded as a disadvantageous phenomenon. The time is not so remote when the main socio-economic problem in Poland was rural over-population and the need for decreasing it (Mirowski 1985). During the inter-world war years, in the 1930s, some economists estimated the overpopulatin of the Polish rural areas at about 8 million people, which amounted to, approximately, 1/3 of the overall rural population count. This overpopulation hindered the modernization of agriculture and slowed down the general socio-economic development of the country. As the result of the biological war losses and mass demographic movements just after the war, which were connected with the resettlement process, the rural over-population problem had already disappeared before 1950. Thereafter, in the 1950s and 1960s, there were still mass migrations going on from rural to urban areas, but this outflow from villages was compensated by the very high birthrates there. The rural population in Poland, although undergoing slight ups and downs, remained at the level of approximately 15 000 000 people. Under these circumstances, there were no reasons for anxiety about rural population, although the on-going decrease of the agricultural population had been a problem throughout this period. Still, when taking into account the fact that employment decrease is unavoidably linked with the modernization of agriculture, this phenomen was not regarged as disadvantageous for agricultural production. On the regional scale, however, there appeared in some particular locations population decreases in rural areas and especially so in the regions with domintaing agricultural employment, and deprived of industrial development as well as other non-agricultural job opportunities. This phenomenon did not, however, appear distinctly enough in the analyses performed on the regional level (according to the previous administrative breakdown in which Poland was divided into 17 voivodships but only in these studies which considered smaller territorial units, i.e., boroughs, communes, and new voivod-ships, according to the new spatial division, in force since June 1st, 1975 (Dzieworiski and Kosinski 1967; Iwanicka — Lyra 1981; Eberhardt 1983).In this study, the depopulation process in rural areas has been presented from the point of view of demographic statistics in a regional pattern, according to the division into voivodships, and the progress of this process as a succession of the development policy of the country.

Andrzej Gawryszewski, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences, Twarda 51/55, 00‑818 Warszawa, Poland
Alina Potrykowska, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakowskie Przedmieście 30, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland

Abstract

It is widely accepted in the literature that urban agglomerations play an important part in the national settlement system. The question, however, arises whether they shoud be considered in terms of a common sub-system within the national settlement system or as comprised within their individual regional settlement systems. Beginning with the morphology of the agglomerations, especially from their observed sectoral develpoment, as following bands of the transportation and communication infrastruc-ture, it was concluded that the development was related to the placement of neighbouring agglomerations. On this basis the conclusion was arrived at that the agglomerations must be strongly interrelated. Further on, a hypothesis was put forward that agglomerations form an integrated sub-system within the national settlement system (Korcelli 1976). A test of whether or not urban agglomerations should be considered in terms of common sub-system ought, however, to be supported by an investigation of whether their inter-relationships are more important than the relation-ships ot each of them with its umiand. The answer to this question would allow us to conclude whether changes in the Polish settlement system aim at the develpoment of a single super-agglomeration, as Leszczycki (1973) maintains, or of a system of urban regions with agglomerations as the centres of some of them, as Dziewoński (1972, 1973) agrues. An analysis of the Polish regional structure indicated that agglomerations are entities of a regional rather than national scale; this permitted the hypothesis that the relationships between individual agglomerations and their regions are stronger thar those between the agglomerations are (Rykiel 1978). To test this hypothesis, vectoral data should be used which would allow the distinguishing of the relationships within the hypothetic sub-system of agglomerations, those between individual agglomerations and their respective regions, and those with the rest of Poland.

Zbigniew Rykiel, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakowskie Przedmieście 30, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland

Abstract

Studies of the demographic differentiation of the Polish urban system demonstrated (Pytel-Tafel 1984) that migration has been the factor which contributes most to such a differentiation.The aims of the studies on demographic structures in towns were to present a generalized picture of the demographic differentiations in all of the Polish towns, to explain the causes of some demographic phenomena, as well as to empirically confirm the existence of the processes known from theory. The study encompassed the set of the 803 Polish boroughs which existed in 1977.Geography involves a number of classes of spaces, among which socio-economic spaces form a distinct group. According to K. Dziewoński (1967), general socio--economic space is a totality composed of partial spaces. This space contains various elements, subsets and interrelations. In the analyses of demographic space, being a subset of the general socio-economic space, three partial spaces were a priori distinguished, referred to further on as subspaces: the demographic, the socio-occupational and the migratory space. These subspaces constitute segments of reality; they are interdependent, but not identical. Each of them was defined by a set of possibly homogeneous diagnostic features — variables. In order to determine the main dimensions of the subspaces distinguished, three detailed principal component analyses had been performed, and thereafter a joint analysis was carried out for the set of all the 47 variables (see Table 1) in order to provide for a comparability of the partial and summary results.

Abstract

The ageing and the elderly are among the common key-wôrds in the social science literature today. One more specific theme, i.e. migrations by the elderly population, is of a particular interest to geographers as well as to some demographers and sociologists. The elderly migrants are found to reveal distinct behaviour and motivation patterns, hence this branch of studies is clearly separated from the main stream research on human migrations, and often closely interlinked with other lines of research on the elderly populations (see for example, Cribier 1982; Warnes 1982; Warnes and Law 1983).In Poland, the studies on elderly migrations were introduced by M. Latuch in the early 1970s (see: Latuch 1974, 1977; Bondaruk 1976) and focused initially on magnitude and causes of out-migration by elderly persons from the major cities, in particular Warsaw. More recently, a comprehensive analysis of social and economic factors of elderly migration was carried out by K. Stolarczyk (1985). Her study, was based on a special survey among a sample of persons aged 60 years and over who changed their place of residence during four selected months in 1979. In a parallel study, based on current population registration data, E. Frątczak (1984) attempted to estimate the role of rural-to-urban migrations, against fertility and morality change, in the growth of the elderly population numbers in Poland between 1950 and 1978. Finally, P. Korcelli and A. Fotrykowska (1986) discussed intependencies between mobility rates and family status of elderly migrants, and presented an analysis of migrations of the elderly by age and cause.The present paper looks into spatial patterns of the eiderly population and the recent configurations of elderly migration in Poland. Basic reference units comprise 49 vivodships, i.e. administrative regions of the upper level. Some migration data are also presented for a more aggregated division into urban and rural areas. Geographical distribution is an important dimension from the social policy perspective. Compared with other countries in Europe, the ageing of the population of Poland is neither very advanced nor particularly rapid. However, spatial concentration of the elderly popula-tion, as well as specific patterns of its redistribution, generate a number of policy issues on the regional and local level. Such problems range from the provision of specialized services to the maintenance of housing and the utilization of farmland.

Piotr Korcelli [korcelli@twarda.pan.pl], Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakowskie Przedmieście 30, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland
Alina Potrykowska, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakowskie Przedmieście 30, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland

Grzegorz Węcławowicz [g.wecla@twarda.pan.pl], Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization Polish Academy of Sciences, Twarda 51/55, 00‑818 Warszawa, Poland