Demography and welfare

The Nordic working group on demography and welfare aims to form a joint Nordic platform for producing knowledge and exchanging experiences regarding the challenges and opportunities induced by the current demographic and labour-market related changes in Nordic regions and municipalities.

The work produced in the working group will provide new insights to the Nordic policymaking community for addressing the consequences of demographic changes in several policy fields, such as provision of welfare services, labour-market, business development, housing, and education. It will also highlight innovative national, regional and local solutions to handle demographic challenges and opportunities. Through the Nordic Demography Programme 2014-2015, innovative Nordic collaboration projects on the topic have been funded.

Working programme 2016 – the final year of the working group

In 2016 the working group has prioritised three projects:

• NordMap – webmapping tool for territorial monitoring of demographic trends
• Social Innovation in local development
• From Migrants to Workers: Immigrants’ role in the local labour markets in the Nordic region

The webmapping tool NordMap 2.0 was launched in June with a new, easier to use design, also including new features such as time play and select similar. Try it out!

The social innovation project was finalized in October at the Social Innovation Summit in Malmö, Sweden, where we launched the web resource Social Innovation in local development, including 23 examples of SI in practice, building social capital and improving services in rural communities. The project started with a Social Innovation workshop in 2014.

The third project, on migration and integration to fight depopulation in rural regions, will be finalised by the end of the year. Here we have focused on migration trends and regional and local practices on integration of labour migrants and refugees, based on quantitative data analyses followed by six case studies across the Nordics. Download the policy brief here. A scenario analysis was also carried out, resulting in a working paper and a policy brief: Scenarios for 2015-2080: The impact of migration on population and ageing.

The knowledge produced in all projects will contribute to the Nordic regional policy-making debate through a number of publications and dissemination activities. See list of all publications bellow. The working group’s final seminar about the role of youth and immigrants for local development was held on 25 November 2016 at Nordregio together with Hela Norden ska leva, and umbrella organisation of Nordic NGOs within local development.