Ageing is a key challenge for many countries. The purpose of this paper is to simulate how ageing affects future regional labour market outcomes. We develop a simulation procedure based on data for 71 Nordic regions in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The procedure combines spatial econometrics and population projections for scenario analyses of future employment patterns up to 2021. Compared to a "benchmark scenario" based on projections of the working age population, we find that predicted regional labour market outcomes tell a much richer story if a combination of estimation results and population projections is used. To this end, our results can be helpful for economic policymaking, which is constantly in need of accurate regional labor market forecasts.
With human mobility on the rise, multicultural marriages have become noticeably more common in the past decades. The marriage market has thus expanded over time, going from being exclusively local and national to becoming increasingly global. Marriage, in turn, has become a significant factor that influences migration. This edited book looks at marriage migration and multicultural marriages from a wide range of viewpoints and takes into account the spectrum of dynamism.
This edited book aims to deliver more information and a greater understanding of how dynamic multicultural marriages are in different societies around the world. The book includes chapters that look at the phenomenon globally but also provide views at the national and local levels.
It is commonly understood across Europe that the provision of Social Services of General Interest (SSGI) is important. Several official documents guarantee every EU citizen access to, and the availability of, SSGI. Nevertheless, when it comes to producing, financing, administrating and territorially organising SSGI, the approaches and practices used across the various European states differ significantly while often mirroring the functioning of the social welfare and national administrative planning systems that prevail on the ground. The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic analysis of how European states (the EU 27 plus Croatia and the EFTA countries of Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) cope with the organisation of SSGI in the fields of education, care, labour market, social housing and insurance schemes. Outlining the similarities and differences of the various national approaches leads to the creation of a European typology of SSGI organisation. This typology will then be compared to existing typologies and classifications of social welfare and spatial planning systems.
No single or common definition, or even a shared basic understanding, of Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) currently exists. The conceptual background of TIA is focused on Territorial Cohesion (TC), which, in turn, also lacks a single definition. TC has a strong connection to Services of General Interest (SGI) as these services are a crucial element of the Cohesion Policy. This paper is a spin-off from the ESPON SeGI project and aims to discuss the applicability of TIA on SGI. The analysis is focused on an ex ante evaluation of TIA and on the methodology of critical evaluation. The findings suggest a rather limited applicability as an undefined concept (TIA) is based on another undefined concept (TC) to measure the impact on a third vaguely defined concept (SGI). Moreover, the particularities of each SGI may be related to economic and social changes that themselves may or may not be territorially reflected.
The place marketing concept is one of the most popular concepts used in the analysis and promotion of countries, regions, cities and towns. The intensification of competition for investment, tourism and human resources among European cities and towns has increased the importance of being unique. Most studies on place marketing focus on unique selling points and thus on brands of already extensively 'marketed' countries, national capitals and other large metropolitan areas, while the rural towns that need more marketing attention, given their need to overcome their lack of material and non-material resources, are often ignored. This is based on the idea of the promotion to target markets of the unique selling points of the town in question. This paper aims to discuss the extent to which the place marketing concept can be viewed as an essential tool in the effective promotion of 75 rural towns in the seven northernmost regions of Sweden. The paper outlines the reasons why rural towns in Northern Sweden should use place marketing. The article also highlights the basic features of the place marketing concept and its key elements for rural towns as well as describing the target audience for rural towns while identifying their specific needs and wants.
The place marketing concept is one of the popular concepts to analyze and promote countries, regions, cities and towns. The intensification of competition for investment, tourism and human resources among European cities and towns has increased the importance of being unique. Most of studies on place marketing however focus on the unique selling points and brands of countries, the capitals and the big cities, while rural towns need more marketing attention due to overcoming the lack of material and non-material resources in the towns. This is based on the idea of promotion to target markets of unique selling point of the town.
This paper aims to discuss to what extent the place marketing concept as a necessary condition for an effective promotion of 75 rural towns in the seven northernmost regions in Sweden. The paper presents reasons for using the place marketing concept by rural towns in Northern Sweden. Also it contains features of the place marketing concept and its key elements for rural towns, describes the target audience for rural towns with their specific needs and wants.
The European Union is currently experiencing a period of significant upheaval. The financial crisis, structural changes in the economy and population decline in many regions combine to make a difficult situation even worse in respect of SGI. To mitigate these problems EU policy on economic, social and territorial cohesion aims to remove regional differences and to otherwise affect policies to ensure the right to the same service status regardless of localisation. This paper aims to discuss what a minimum level of SGI means to individuals and enterprises. The key EU policy documents offer no guidance in terms of defining what a minimum level of SGI is, for either individuals or enterprises. It is up to the Member States to define the thresholds; national policies, traditions and moral values thereby creating a vague and heterogeneous notion of what constitutes a minimum level of SGI provision.
This paper aims at comparing the scientific literature and key EU policy documents on the impact of services of general interest on regional development. The study proposes to answer two questions: (1) how do the scientific literature and EU policy documents differ in terms of which services of general interest are seen to have an impact on regional development and (2) why do they identify different services of general interest as important for regional development? The method used is qualitative discourse analysis.
The results indicate that services of general interest have a rather different assumed impact on regional development in the scientific literature and in the key EU policy documents. Eight out of the fourteen services of general interest analysed in this study are either not mentioned at all or are only indirectly touched upon in the studied EU policy documents. The EU policy documents consider the drivers for regional development to be transport, ICT and telecommunications, electricity, education and health.
The services of general interest (SGI) have received increasing attention of the European Union, which considers them a key element of the European model of society. They not only play an important role in the ongoing competitiveness of the European economy, but are also essential for achieving the goal of promoting social and territorial cohesion. Their potential role in the pursuit of the objectives of European cohesion and convergence policies may be significant which calls for an appropriate measurement and analysis of territorial distribution. The indicators are assumed to be a key element in measuring and describing the SGI, however, it is necessary to make a serious reflection how such indicators should be selected. The selection of indicators can be conditioned by several factors, however, it is imperative to make a qualitative reflection on the adequacy and relevance of indicators to analyse the SGI. This reflection runs through the paper. The concept of indicators is addressed, and their strengths and weaknesses are discussed. The indicators are classified according to the role they play in the cause-effect relations in distinct territories. Three types of indicators are identified. Appraisal of indicators and review of literature render it possible to identify the most frequently used indicators and to see SGI analysis from several perspectives, thus verifying that indicators can present different meanings and relevance, based on a range of factors and the scale of analysis. Some of the uncertainties arising in the SGI territorial analysis, which can contribute to the success of the policy making process, are recognized through an example based on the ICT Telecommunication SGI sub-domain. Some procedures connected with the integration of different types of indicators are proposed in order to limit the emergent uncertainties resulting from their interpretation
When welfare is analysed in Sweden the analysis is usually made at the national level; when the analysis is not done on the national level, the local level is in focus to illuminate differences between municipalities. Studies on poverty are no exception. The regional level contains a lot of information which is needed to understand the dynamics of poverty. Without this information it is difficult to fight or mitigate poverty. The previous research focusing on i) regional aspects of poverty and, at the same time, ii) child poverty is very limited. The aim of this paper is to analyse child poverty in Sweden 1990 and 2010 in a regional perspective. A multivariate cross-section OLS regression model will be used to estimate what factors causing child poverty in a regional perspective. The chosen method enables to control for a subset of explanatory variables and examine the effect of a selected independent variable when estimating the factors causing child poverty in a regional perspective. This study uses data collected from Statistics Sweden (SCB), the National Board of Social Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) and the National Labour Market Board (Arbetsformedlingen). The data used is regional macro data, which does not contain information on single individuals. The regional share of children living on economic assistance in Sweden is used as the dependent variable while the regional share of foreign born population, regional unemployment rate, the regional share of single parents, regional sickness leave, regional mean personal income and mean regional transfers per person are used as independent variables. The findings indicate that old industrial regions experience a high presence of child poverty. These regions experience an obsolete economic structure and an obstructed structural change in the economy. High unemployment, a high share of early retirement and sickness leave and relatively high welfare transfers to the population. The statistical analysis show that when the share of foreign born increases in the regional population, so do the regional share of children living on economic assistance; being unable to enter the labour market is the most probable reason. Higher incomes lower the regional share of children living on economic assistance.
When the issue of welfare is addressed in Sweden analysis is usually focused on the national level, in a smaller number of cases on the local level, but rarely on the regional level. Studies on poverty are no exception. The aim of this paper is to analyse child poverty in Sweden, from a regional perspective, in 1990 and 2010. A multivariate cross-section OLS regression model is used to estimate regional factors causing child poverty. Regional macro data is used. The findings indicate that old industrial regions experience greater child poverty. The statistical analysis shows that when the share of foreign-born individuals increases in the regional population, so does the regional share of children living on social assistance. Higher incomes lower the regional share of children living on social assistance.
Most rural and peripheral regions in Sweden suffer from an outmigration of young adults and particularly young women are over-represented in this outmigration. The outmigration of young adults in general and young women in particular is headed for the major towns in southern Sweden and the capital city Stockholm. This sex-biased out-migration has been on-going for more than 40 years for some rural regions in Sweden. This paper aims at explaining the outmigration and return migration of women 18-34 to and from the peripheral region Västernorrland in Northern Sweden. A qualitative method will be used in the analysis in this study. The empirical material consists of expert interviews and interviews with young women leaving Västernorrland, returning to Västernorrland or moving in without any prior connection to the region. The conventional driving forces for out-migration of young women are connected to studies and moving to more female-friendly labour markets. The findings in this study suggest that bad infrastructure and general service are factors causing out-migration and repel women to return. Furthermore, young women with weak social networks in the region appear more willing to leave and the 'macho culture' in the region appears a push-factor.
Services of General Interest (SGI) are a heterogeneous group of services for which the EU Member States are primarily responsible. Territorial Cohesion is a vague political concept aiming at creating a balanced distribution of economic and social resources among the European regions in order to promote competitiveness and sustainable growth. Consequently, the potential to successfully
implement territorial cohesion policy objectives under these conditions is low. This paper aims to discuss how territorial cohesion policy is implemented in the area of services of general interest.
Despite nearly sixty years of European Integration, Social Policy remains a core state function while the 'politics' of Social Policy – the particular history, ideas and institutions upon which national social policies are based - remain quite heterogeneous, a process of convergence is nevertheless discernible in respect of policy implementation. The reasons for this relate to the nature of the European integration process but should not be confused with the broad adoption of a notional 'European Social Model', the harmonisation of national policies or, more generally, with the traditional approach to EU policy making, in the social field. This paper aims to bring together a number of congruent though often disparate discourses in the fields of political science, spatial planning and social policy to explore how the implementation typology of Social Services of General Interest produced by Humer et al. (2013) can be understood with reference to 'New Institutionalist' and Multi-Level Governance approaches in EU studies focusing on the potential for 'covert integration' in respect of core state functions.