Urban and rural geographies of aging: a local spatial correlation analysis of aging population measures

The spatial distribution of aging populations is commonly measured with either the aging population ratio or the aging population density. Used in isolation, however, these measures may fail to detect aging communities in certain types of urban or rural setting. This study uses both indices simultaneously to identify types and locations of aging communities more accurately. We investigate the spatial distribution of these communities using a standard correlation analysis and bivariate local spatial statistic analysis. Empirical analysis of geospatial data of the Aichi Prefecture in Japan suggests that using both indices allows us to capture different types of aging communities in diverse contexts (e.g. depopulated rural areas, pockets of aging communities in urban areas, and growing concentrations of aging population in the suburbs). The analysis uses data sets aggregated at different areal scales, confirming the generally stable nature of the outcome, despite some scale sensitivity.