A double depopulation process in the interior of Spain during the XXth century: migration and “missing” births in the region of Castile-Leon

Luis Alberto Del Rey Poveda, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Maria del Mar Cebrian, Universidad de Salamanca

This paper analyses the demographic dynamics in Castile&Leon (Spain) from 1900 until 2005. This region has undergone a radical transformation in mortality and fertility rates and above all, intense migration processes: internal and international emigrations, interior migrations and now, international immigration. The result has been a high depopulation process. In order to analyse this process, we have used the Birth Replacement Ratio, an indicator that incorporates the effects of all three demographic phenomena in the evolution of births. On the one hand, it measures whether births of a particular year replace births of "previous generation”. On the other hand, it is possible to decompose the effect of migration in the generational replacement process: first, there is a direct effect generated by the migration of women at motherhood and secondly, there is an indirect effect due to the loss/gain of future births that is caused by this migration of women.