Ageing Regions: Turning liabilities into opportunities for regional development

This project addresses the impacts of an ageing society on regions in Sweden and Denmark. An ageing society, characterized by high old-age dependency ratios and an ageing workforce, is usually depicted as a challenge that undermines economic development potential of regions. In this project we turn this assumption on its head.

We argue there are good reasons to consider an ageing population and workforce as a region’s (latent) asset that triggers new opportunities for socially inclusive and economically sustainable development.

In Europe, the highest old-age dependency ratios are concentrated in remote and rural regions, which puts them at the forefront of developing responses. This implies a reversal of innovation diffusion patterns from the past: Peripheral regions cannot wait for technological or organizational solutions to trickle down from large cities. Instead they must be sites of innovation and strategic planning.

Despite growing policy attention, up until now, the challenges and opportunities associated with ageing societies have not been connected to place. Our project asks: How can we make those places of greatest need (deindustrializing and rural regions) also the places that capture benefits of developing solutions?

Our project investigates the structural preconditions and the organizational capacities that are needed for leaders in regions to grab this opportunity. We combine quantitative analysis of register data with in-depth case studies in Sweden and Denmark.