cover image: The Demography-Economy-Land use interaction (DELi) model :A modular and integrated approach to regionalise socioeconomic projections

20.500.12592/573nbqc

The Demography-Economy-Land use interaction (DELi) model :A modular and integrated approach to regionalise socioeconomic projections

10 Jan 2024

Demographic and economic projections are valuable analytical tools for policy-making, but these are typically produced at country-level aggregations. In this report, we propose a new model that allows to regionalise socioeconomic and demographic projections from the country level to the NUTS3 regional level: the Demography-Economy-Land use interaction (DELi) model. DELi relies on a set of linked equations that integrate empirically-derived assumptions regarding future regional growth, and estimate regional levels of GDP, employment, population and land use recursively and in an integrated manner, thus capturing demography-economy feedbacks as well as ongoing, expected or assumed processes of divergence and convergence across regions. The model can be configured to generate different regionalisation scenarios based on the same or different input country-level projections. DELi was built as a modular, flexible structure that allows to expand or substitute any of its components by alternative methodological approaches or assumptions. To the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive, integrated, transparent and flexible framework to regionalise socioeconomic projections like DELi was still lacking for EU policy support. DELi can be used to quantify scenarios of regional socioeconomic trends for anticipatory policy support on domains with a strong regional or territorial dimension. Concretely, DELi can be used to explore scenarios of regional convergence or divergence, demographic change, land use policies, and their territorial implications at NUTS3 level. Examples of country level projections that could be regionalised using DELi are those regularly produced by the European Commission Ageing Reports or the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). DELi is still an exploratory tool, with substantial room for future improvement. As it stands, the model presents some limitations such as the lack of sectoral detail, and limited degrees of freedom to deviate from given country-level projections. However, DELi offers already a valuable template to regionalise or even generate socio-economic projections and can be subject to further methodological improvement and expanded in its scope, functionality and applications.
land use demographic analysis population statistics regional development research report eu statistics economic model

Authors

Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Curtale, Riccardo, Schiavone, Matteo, Deuster, Christoph, Alessandrini, Alfredo, Ueffing, Philipp, Natale, Fabrizio, Dijkstra, Lewis, Batista e Silva, Filipe

Catalogue number
KJ-NA-31-796-EN-N
Citation
European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Curtale, R., Schiavone, M., Deuster, C. et al., The Demography-Economy-Land use interaction (DELi) model – A modular and integrated approach to regionalise socioeconomic projections , Publications Office of the European Union, 2024, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/025883
DOI
https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/025883
ISBN
978-92-68-11115-4
ISSN
1831-9424
Pages
43
Published in
Belgium
Themes
Regional policy and regional economies , Population and social conditions

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