Interfacing Economic and Demographic Models for Rural Areas: Design and Methodological Considerations

Recent increases in the number of resource and industrial developments in rural areas [10] have led to the creation of a large number of comprehensive planning models usually identified as “economic-demographic” projection models [see for example 1, 3, 4, 5]. These models are used to delineate systematically the interrelationships among various economic, demographic, and social factors. They differ in their basic model structure, their degrees of flexibility, and range of user input options, and in terms of the geographic and governmental units for which projections are made. Each, however, includes a basic economic module, a demographic module, and a module for interrelating or interfacing the economic and demographic modules. Additional modules, such as fiscal impact, settlement allocation, public service, and housing demand modules, also may be included but they tend to operate directly on the outputs of one of the other three basic components and are thus largely addendums to the economic, demographic, or interface modules of such models.