Barakat, Bilal. 2014. A ‘Recipe for Depopulation’? School Closures and Local Population Decline in Saxony. Population, Space and Place, 21, 735-753.
BibTeX
Abstract
A popular notion asserts that closing the last primary school marks a community’ s demographic death. No young parents will remain, much less new ones move in. This notion is frequently voiced but rarely verified. Are school closures a cause or consequence of local decline? This study reviews existing research on school locations and peripheral population decline to show that expectations of a dramatic impact of school closures on out-migration are theoretically ill-founded. I proceed to discuss specific methodological challenges in the empirical analysis of this re- lationship, and conduct a statistical analysis for the province of Saxony in East Germany for the period 1994–2007. In contrast to the prevailing discourse, there is little evidence of an appre- ciable effect of primary school closures on local population decline. This negative finding is discussed in light of local contextual factors and general insights from population geography.
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| Status of publication | Published |
|---|---|
| Affiliation | WU |
| Type of publication | Journal article |
| Journal | Population, Space and Place |
| Citation Index | SSCI |
| Language | English |
| Title | A ‘Recipe for Depopulation’? School Closures and Local Population Decline in Saxony |
| Volume | 21 |
| Year | 2014 |
| Page from | 735 |
| Page to | 753 |
| Reviewed? | Y |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.1853 |
| Open Access | N |
Associations
- People
- Barakat, Bilal (Former researcher)
- Organization
- Research Institute for Human Capital and Development FI (Former organization)
- Research areas (ÖSTAT Classification 'Statistik Austria')
- 1809 Social geography (Details)
- 1813 Population geography (Details)
- 5403 Educational sociology (Details)
- 5404 Demography (Details)
- 5405 Empirical social research (Details)
- 5702 Population statistics (Details)
- 5703 Demography (Details)
- 5704 Social statistics (Details)
- 5804 Educational economy (Details)
- 5805 Educational planning (Details)
- 5806 Educational sociology (Details)
- 5906 Educational economy (Details)