Does road accessibility to cities support rural population growth? Evidence for Portugal between 1991 and 2011

Abstract

Motorways in Portugal received large scale funding after the country joined the European Union in 1986, making it an ideal case to study the effect of road accessibility on the development of lagging rural areas. We investigate the relationship between rural population change and road accessibility to the urban hierarchy between 1991 and 2011. We find that rural population growth is negatively associated with increased road distance and travel time to cities, notably to medium-sized cities (20,000–99,999 inhabitants). There is no evidence of nonlinearities in the effect of proximity to the urban hierarchy between accessible and remote rural areas.