A New Approach to Measuring the Impact of Age Structure on Population Change in Visegrad Countries

Csaba G. Tóth, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies

Visegrad countries have followed different population paths in the three decades following the regime change in 1990. Hungary's population decreased by 5.8 per cent, Poland's remained stable, while Czechia and Slovakia both recorded population growth of 3.2 per cent between 1990 and 2020. Our research aimed to draw attention to the role of age structure in population trends by decomposing population change into the effect of fertility, mortality, migration and initial age structure using stable population theory. Results indicate that the increase in life expectancy has substantially mitigated the population-reducing effect of low fertility in all Visegrad countries. On the other hand, the age structure has also been shown to play a significant role in population change. This factor explains why only Hungary experienced a significant decline in population in the three decades following the regime change. Nevertheless, decomposing the impact of each factor also shows that if we exclude the direct impact of the initial age structure, all Visegrad countries would have experienced a significant population decline between 1990 and 2020.

Keywords: Decomposition analysis, Population projections, forecasts, and estimations, Population Policies, Mixed methods research

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