ECONOMIC-DEVELOPMENT AND POPULATION CONCENTRATION

A key view among scholars is that the relationship between economic development and population concentration may be described by a U-shaped curve. Studies that have utilized international cross-sectional data in conjunction with the Pareto distribution for city sizes have failed to confirm this relationship. A plausible explanation for the failure is that this relationship holds true for individual countries and does not necessarily show up in cross-sectional analysis. To examine this possibility, in this article I used time series data from Israel for verification or refutation of this relationship. I specified and estimated a simple one-stage model of population concentration, which postulates that population concentration is determined by variables such as per capita GNP, population density, per capita vehicles, and total population. The principal finding of the analysis reveals that except for population density all variables included perform well in explaining population concentration through time. Of particular interest is the confirmation of a U-shaped relationship between economic development and population concentration. -from Author