The importance of place-based, internal resources for the population development in small rural communities

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether place-based, internal resources are related to population growth in small rural communities. Presumably due to data unavailability, very few previous studies have tried to model population growth at the sub-municipality level so far. This paper attempts to fill some of this gap by using a unique parish sample (n = 489) to model population growth in rural parishes in Denmark during the period 2012–2017. The paper employs a capital framework approach and initially identifies six place-based stocks of capital that might be important to the population development in small rural communities. Moreover, the paper makes a distinction between rural parishes located in predominantly rural municipalities and rural parishes located in predominantly urban municipalities. Based on multiple regression analyses, initial levels of physical capital, economic capital and human capital were found to be related to population growth in rural parishes located in predominantly rural municipalities, whereas only symbolic capital (place reputation) was found to be related to population growth in rural parishes located in predominantly urban municipalities.