| Chapter 1: | Introducing Japan’s Shrinking Regions* |
would not compensate for the resulting loss, leading to population shrinkage. Although suggestions of a third demographic transition and the establishment of stable populations have been put forward (Myrskyla, Kohler, & Billari, 2009), this has not yet occurred in a manner sustainable enough to enable replacement in Europe or Japan.
Population shrinkage is multidimensional and is a process that normally occurs within a cumulative self-reinforcing pattern of depopulation, economic disruption, and social deterioration, the outcome of which is a renewed—if not strengthened and accelerated—cycle of the emptying of local communities, the gutting of local economies, a collapse in local reserves of social and human capital, and a decline in the quality of life experienced by those who remain.
Although the research presented in this book offers a more complicated, if not occasionally contradictory, portrait of a challenging social phenomenon, as a starting point it is safe to say that population shrinkage in developed countries is fundamentally a relationship of cause and effect that is normally associated with a decline in fertility—specifically, when fertility remains for a long period below the base population reproduction level of approximately 2.1 births per woman over her lifetime, resulting in an eventual surplus of deaths over births. This is either tempered or exacerbated by net levels of migration that occur in an area, with this population decline also being a function of other social dynamics that alter the relationships in sometimes unpredictable ways. In a comprehensive study of depopulation in Europe, Bucher and Mai (2005) classified the phenomenon into either an ‘old’ or a ‘new’ pattern. The former is mainly caused when out-migration exceeds natural change, whereas the latter occurs when the component of change is a death surplus caused by a long-term decline in fertility. These two patterns can be further elucidated using the Webb classification, which identified eight different types of population change, as follows:
Population increase:
A: Birth surplus exceeds out-migration
B: Birth surplus exceeds in-migration