We use cookies on our website. Some are necessary for the operation of the website. You can also allow cookies for statistical purposes. You can adjust the data protection settings or agree to all cookies directly.
Data Protection Declaration
Imprint
Monitoring of rural areas in Germany: living conditions according to the official statistics and as perceived by the population
Project
Project code: TI-LR-08-PID1710
Contract period: 01.07.2015
- 31.12.2016
Purpose of research: Inventory & Assessment
Depending on the typology applied, rural areas in Germany are home to about 30 to 50 percent of the population. They are characterized by villages and small towns, a great share of agricultural land use and forestry, as well as a relatively low population and settlement density.
The official statistics already offer a wide range of data and indicators to analyse and depict living conditions in rural areas. Yet, rurality is characterized by highly diverse social, economic and structural conditions which so far can only hardly be portrayed. Neither an urban-rural dichotomy nor a rural-urban continuum are scientifically satisfactory concepts. Equally important is the fact that our knowledge on how the inhabitants of rural areas perceive and assess their quality of life and service provision – and whether distinct assessments coincide with different types of rural areas – is fairly limited. The monitoring project wants to both provide a differentiated picture of rural areas in Germany and involve the perceptions of the population.
The monitoring consists of four components:
1. a typology of rural areas to give consideration to the diversity of rurality in Germany,
2. a set of indicators that allows for the analysis and illustration of social, demographic and economic developments of rural areas as well as their land use,
3. a web-mapping application to display the different indicators by means of interactive maps and
4. a standardized questionnaire survey among the rural population in order to get an understanding how rural quality of life and the provision of public and private services are assessed.
The monitoring builds, on the one hand, upon existing structural data that will be presented in interactive maps. To this end, we use small-scale data from official federal and state statistics and create new indices in order to display the social, demographic, economic and land-use situation of rural areas in Germany as well as its changes over time.
On the other hand, we will create new data concerning the perceptions of rural living conditions by the population. This will be done in 2016 via a standardized questionnaire survey that will focus on subjective assessments of the quality of life and service provision in rural areas in Germany.
Section overview
Subjects
- Agricultural Sociology
