Accessibility and rural population decline: methodological approach in Castilla-La Mancha (Spain)

Abstract

Accessibility to certain basic services and equipment is of particular interest in the design of policies that seek to curb rural population decline processes. Its relevance is acknowledged also by in-stitutions, as for example in the recent Population Decline Act of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain), that considers accessibility as one of the basic criteria when delimiting different levels of population decline. This article shows a methodological proposal for the analysis of accessibility in the Au-tonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha, so that it can serve as a reference for the diagnosis of population decline processes and respond to the technical assumptions established in that law. The methodology consists in measuring the degree of accessibility to functional, health and edu-cational services and their level of correlation between accessibility and population decline. The conclusions demonstrate, on the one hand, the logical relationship between population decline and lower access capacity; and, on the other, the accessibility analysis to provide basic services is essential when defining the population decline phenomenon from a territorial perspective.