International migration, ageing, and growth in rural Spanish provinces: A roadmap for policymakers?

Abstract

The aim of our research is to provide additional evidence of international migration’s impact on economic growth in regions with ageing populations, namely by analysing the impact on rural versus urban areas in Spain. With Spanish provinces categorised as predominantly urban, predominantly rural and intermediate, our analysis considers data at the provincial level (i.e. NUTS 3) from 2000 to 2019 and follows a convergence-style approach. Our estimations suggest that, overall, population ageing does not negatively impact the GDP per capita growth rate for any type of province (i.e. rural, urban and intermediate) but that rural provinces benefit far more than urban ones from international migration as a driver of growth.