The European Commission’s Long-term Vision for Rural Areas, published in June 2021 and building on a previous report on the Impact of Demographic Change and a Green Paper on Ageing, underlines the importance of population trends as a key issue for EU rural policy. The increasing concern about demographic issues, especially in rural Europe, has been accompanied, and in some cases preceded, by the publication of national population strategies. This renewed interest within the European policy community probably has roots in politics rather than new research or fresh evidence. Rural depopulation is not a new phenomenon, nor is it a new research topic. Nevertheless, to better understand this renewed interest, it is instructive to review recent scholarship and consider whether there is any evidence that the processes and systems of rural and regional (demographic) development are delivering new kinds of challenges, requiring refreshed policy approaches. Having established this context, we present a comparative review of a selection of national strategies, identifying shifting perspectives on goals, the instruments proposed, and implied intervention logics. Arguably, cumulative evidence points to an incremental shift of the policy discourse away from neoliberal, Lisbon-inspired visions of rural competitiveness and cost-effectiveness and towards a quest for rural well-being, rights to basic services, and more (spatially) inclusive rural development. This increasing emphasis on qualitative change may be symptomatic of a wider shift in the zeitgeist of rural policy, reflecting a number of globalised trends, including an awareness of the potentials and limitations associated with changing patterns of inter and intra-regional mobility.

The ‘at-risk-of-poverty’ rate is the most widely recognised indicator of income poverty. Its principal advantage is that it is relatively straightforward to define and (given appropriate data) to calculate. National at-risk-of-poverty rates play a key role in monitoring EU2020 objectives relating to combating poverty. Regional patterns of poverty have the potential to deepen our understanding of processes of impoverishment and differentiation, and how they can be more effectively addressed by policy. Estimating regional poverty rates, and especially producing a European map, is a challenging task, given current data resources. This paper begins by placing the at-risk-of-poverty rate within the wider conceptual context relating to poverty, social exclusion and deprivation. It then provides an account of an exercise to map at-risk-of-poverty rates at NUTS 3 across 20 European countries. Together with data derived from national registers (where available) and more direct apportionment methods, coverage of most of Western Europe is achieved. The patterns revealed are described, and generalisations, which serve as pointers to further research on the processes responsible, are derived. The paper concludes with some reflections on the value of regional at-risk-of-poverty rates in advancing our understanding of the distribution and causes of poverty, and hence appropriate interventions to ameliorate it.

The gradual reorientation of rural policy paradigms away from competitiveness and economic growth and towards well-being and sustainability creates a need for more appropriate diagnostic tools to assess disparities and policy outcomes. One of the most cited determinants of rural well-being is access to Services of General Interest. Areas with relatively poor access to services can be described as “inner peripheries”, and peripherisation literature provides helpful insights into the challenges faced and policy needs. This paper presents a methodology for modelling and mapping access to a suite of ten key services, covering all of Europe at a 2.5 km grid square level. The approach is intrinsically relative, comparing the travel time to services from each grid square with the average for surrounding regions. Maps are provided for 2017 and 2021, and changes between these dates are described. ‘Inner peripheries’ are found in every country, their configuration being influenced not only by geographical features, but also by service delivery practices. Further analysis explores patterns of risk, identifying areas in which service provision is in a precarious position. The results presented are rich in practical policy implications, not least the suggestion that, in terms of patterns of well-being, local roads are at least as important as trunk infrastructure.

This paper presents a methodology to assess the internal and external coherence, and the robustness to future uncertainty, of place-based interventions addressing spatial (in)justice. The methodology merges elements of Theory of Change (ToC) and mechanism mapping with scenario planning. It was designed based on analysis of a range of European interventions (public policies and bottom-up initiatives), selected to highlight the ways spatial injustices have been tackled across different scales. The first phase of the methodology uses a ToC mechanism map to illustrate the logic of the intervention, including its baseline assumptions (internal) and contextual conditions (external). In the second phase, scenarios for the locality are developed based on potential states of global and local macro-trends, revealing how the contextual conditions are expected to change, and whether the intervention's baseline assumptions are likely to hold. This then allows the elaboration of spatial justice trajectories, and for the ToC mechanism map to be updated. To effectively illustrate the methodology, we show how it has been applied using a case study intervention implemented in a territorially disadvantaged area. We present the methodology as a flexible tool allowing detection of more general stylised facts, and spatial comparisons between a broad range of interventions.

The at-risk-of-poverty rate is a key monitoring indicator in connection with the European Union’s goal to take 20 million people out of the risk of poverty and social exclusion by 2020. Whilst there is comprehensive and up to date coverage at the national level, much less is known about how different regions are performing in this respect. This paper illustrates how the World Bank poverty mapping methodology, combined with the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey, can be used to compute small area estimates of at-risk-of-poverty rates for the UK, and compares the obtained estimates with existing estimates of relative poverty obtained using national surveys. There is considerable spatial dispersion in at-risk-of-poverty rates. The highest rates tend to be found in large cities, but there are also relatively high rates in some remote rural areas. Furthermore, regional differences in housing costs can act as an important driver of poverty, particularly in large cities. Our analysis suggests that the EU-SILC survey, combined with national population census data, can provide a practical basis for developing regional or local estimates of at-risk-of-poverty rates across EU Member States, which would be particularly valuable where national surveys have inadequate regional sampling.