Ireland has had a recession since 2008 but ended last year with a return to slow growth and during this time had high unemployment and high emigration. It's expected to be the fastest growing European economy by far over the next 12 months. Still Irelands prosperity, high minimum wage and generous welfare benefits are attracting immigration from Eastern Europe and North Africa in particular. This compounded with Irelands high fertility rate accentuates her population growth above her neighbours.
These trends are expected to continue even as Europe exits recession and returns to growth.
The images surprised me though - it suggests all of Ireland is growing somewhat evenly when the truth is that while most if is growing Dublin and her surrounding area and Cork are growing much faster than the rest and the picture doesn't indicate that though I'm sure the data will.
That reminds me of a section from the book "1493", discussing the introduction of the potato to Europe and later the potato-famine:
> Today Ireland has the melancholy distinction of being the only nation in Europe, and perhaps the world, to have fewer people within the same boundaries than it did more than 150 years ago.
Many here are probably aware that Ireland had in 1845 a population of 9 Million but only 6 Million today (all Island pop). The entirety of the UK at the time had a population of 22 Million people. This means the Britain (Scotland, England and Wales) was only 25% bigger than Ireland at that time which is completely different today with the UK having >60 Million people and Ireland (Republic) having 4.5 Million. Ireland had a similar agricultural output compared to Britain which is at least three time larger.
If the famine didn't happen Ireland could easily have a population of over 30 Million. However it did happen and alternate realities are hard to predict.
However the birthrate is far outstripping any emmigration losses so they continue to have a largely positive population growth.
As far as I could tell, the darkest red colour represents '> 2% population growth,' so that graphic is not much good at breaking down areas that are all experiencing more than 2% growth.
JPEG: http://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/DE/Home/Topthemen/Downloads/bev...
PDF: http://www.bbsr.bund.de/BBSR/DE/Home/Topthemen/Downloads/Bil...
I think you can probably explain the two red blobs near Aberdeen on oil and the wealth it has brought to that area but at least one of the other red blobs further west must be the Aviemore/Strathspey area which has become incredibly popular for outdoor sports and general high quality of life.
Amusingly, although Aviemore is described as a "boom town" it's population only grew by 36% in the decade to 2011 adding an extra 956 people :-)
http://www.strathspey-herald.co.uk/News/Aviemore-hailed-as-a...
As you know, you can't tell that from this picture. An area that has had large annual population decreases for the first 5 years, and slower growth for the second 5 will still show up as red.
Also, quite a bit of the population decreases in the countryside will be of people moving into the cities.
Because of differences in population density, that can give the impression of population decline where there is none.
Looking at Germany, for me the picture 'confirms' that their population is shrinking (no growth in the west, apparent decrease in the east) that makes the strong growth of their economy in the past years even more of a miracle.
Mostly that's why the population is shrinking, people who live in the better economies, mostly have less kids, mostly due to the fact that they don't have the time and mostly working harder than others.
Also our economy grown mostly cause of the fact that our strong export got a huge increase since we had a european currency ("Deutsche Mark" or "DM" was just too good for the export market), while the Euro is / was way better since other countries brought it to a lower level.
I think the map show no major city in eastern Germany actually losing population.
Seeing a map that combined both percentage and magnitude to compute the colors (perhaps similar to the Tf–idf calculation?) would be much more interpretable. 50% of people leaving the middle of a forest doesn't really tell me much, versus 50% change in a dense city.
Another obvious trend is people moving to large cities.
Also we need to see how the illegal French occupied population of Clipperton Island is changing.
Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis-et-Futuna are rarely included in such stats as they are not part of the EU and not geographically part of Europe either, unlike French Guiana and the others which are part of EU, so at least part of Europe in a political sense.
(Symbiote, all of these territories are very much part of France though, just under different rules for some of them.)
I don't know where you're going with Clipperton though, it's sometimes illegally visited and trashed by fishers and such, but they can't be considered a population in any sense.
Madrid and all surrounding cities (Toledo, etc.) are a big shade of red. Barcelona and in fact the entire densely populated Mediterranean coast (Valencia, etc.) is also lipstick-red. Sure, let's look at the Basque Country. Also red.
The only blue I see is in the mostly rural Extremadura, Leon, etc. (close to Portugal).
So even if pop. decreased, not everyone moved from e.g. Madrid to Germany. Many people moved to smaller cities or rural areas, so if you just see the map without pop densities it looks that way.
Also worth mentioning, Spanish people are still regarded to be religious to some extent and so are the Greek. So, I'm a bit surprised to see the divergence here where Greeks shun marriage and raising children while their Spanish counterparts still hold to these traditional values.
