Fig 7 - Population structure by age and sex for the inhabitants of Vienna in 1998 Fig 8 - Population structure by age and sex for foreigners in Vienna in 1998
tion of Vienna. Among the few relevant publications, we can mention studies by Wiegl (2000), Lutz (2003), Gisser (2005). Apart from that, the author gathered information about the urban span of Vienna herself during her stay in the city. Numerical data came from the Austrian statistical and demographic yearbooks. Then the author separated the data in order to make the necessary mathematical and statistical calculations to obtain coefficients required for the analysis of the demographic development of Vienna. A lot of factors influence the number of people living in Vienna. Some of them were connected with alternations of natural moves caused by social and economic changes which had been taking place in Europe in the 20th century. The effects of the II World War, demographic
transformation since 1970s and migration movements were the main factors influencing the increase or decrease in the population of Vienna. Vienna’s lowest state of population of the whole XX century was in 1987 with 1 484 885 inhabitants. Changing number of population in the whole city reflects inner-city movements. It is worth to emphasize that the population density was similar during the study time (3 897 per/km² in 1951 to 3 982 per/km² in 2006). In every large city the population density decreases from the city centre to the suburbs. The author’s presumption is that in Vienna there is a high density in the central districts and a lower one in the periphery (see Fig.2, Fig.3). We can thus see that Clark’s rule (1975) saying that the population density decreases with the
increasing distance from the city centre is right. It is essential to emphasize, however, that the dynamics of movements within a city showed pluses in the peripheral districts since 1950, which means population growth and minuses in the central ones, which means a decrease (see Fig.4). A bigger area of the peripheral districts makes the density of population in the central districts higher anyway. Changes in population’s age structure are determined by the numbers of births and deaths, and migration. According to the demographic transition model we distinguish four stages of demographic development. In the first stage we can observe high birth rate and also high mortality rate. In the second stage the concern is the demographic transformation and it is divided into two sub-phases: demographic explosion and demographic implosion. Population explosion is characterized by a growing natural increase that is caused by a quickly declining mortality rate and a high birth rate. Contrary to first sub-phase, demographic implosion begins with the reaching of the top level of natural increase. The sub-phase shows a slowly dropping population. The last stage shows a balance between the birth rate and the mortality rate and also slightly changes over the time. (Okólski, 2005) It can be said that the population of Vienna has gone through a demographic transformation, and so the birth and death coefficients diminish (see Fig.11), and the life span increases. This leads to an ageing of the population (see Fig.5, Fig.7, Fig.9). Unfortunately, immigration and an influx of young people will not stop this process. They can only alleviate its negative effects. Vienna is one of the examples where foreigners rejuvenate the structure of the population (see Fig.6, Fig.8, Fig.10). However, in the face of ageing society this phenomenon takes place all over Europe and
EGEA magazine - 3 - december 2008