Regional Revitalization Tasks in Response to Mid- and Long-term Population Changes in Rural Areas

Abstract

본 연구는 농촌에서 나타나는 고령화와 저 출산율에 따른 농촌 인구의 자연적 감소와 사회적 증감 추이를 정량적으로 전망하고 그에 대한 효과적인 대응 정책을 모색하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 구체적으로는 저출산과 고령화, 인구이동 등 농촌의 인구 변화 현상을 분석하고 장래 전망 작업을 수행하는 한편, 이러한 변화가 농촌 사회에 미칠 영향을 파악 하였다. 그리고 이러한 변화에 대응해서 농촌 지역 활성화를 도모하는 데 필요한 정책 과제를 제시하였다.

In Korea, rural areas have undergone birth decline and encountered an increase in the ratio of elder people to young people, which results in the critical decrease of rural population. The decrease of rural population is also attributed to the incessant outflow of young people from rural area. Moreover, the ratio of single living elderly is significantly increasing in rural areas. However, recent inflow of population into rural areas converts the direction of population migration and changes the structure of population in some rural areas. Inflow of population into rural areas may imply the possibility of revitalizing the rural area. In this work, we consider the recent demographic changes of rural area for gaining insight into the underlying changes of rural population in Korea. We take into account the cohort component method with using Korean census data obtained for recent ten years(i.e. from 2003 to 2013) in order to forecast the future population rural areas. We forecast the future rural population between 2018 and 2053 for every five years, and establish three scenarios to elucidate the future rural population in Korea. Though these three scenarios yield slightly different results in the trend of future rural population, these scenarios make a consistent prediction that the future rural population reaches a maximum at a certain period, after which the rural population will be decreasing. Moreover, the result shows population aging is inevitable in rural areas in spite of inflow of population into rural areas. This indicates the necessity to develop the long-term policies, which may result in the revitalization of rural area, and to make detailed task plans that help these policies. In particular, it is important to establish an internal development policy, and an efficient management of local government finance is highly required.