Investigating the effects of public policy on the interregional patterns of population growth: The case of Israel

The effect of a regional policy can be determined by comparing the actual disparity in population between core and periphery regions to the disparity that would have been achieved in the absence of policy. To test this thesis, the policy of population dispersal (PPD) in Israel is considered. The analysis indicates that although this policy, aimed at achieving a more even distribution of the country's population, generally failed to reduce the population imbalance between the core and periphery, it appears to have prevented the population gap from becoming even wider. Based on this conclusion, a counter-balancing approach to improving the future performance of this and similar regional policies is proposed. This approach assumes that location disadvantages of peripheral areas (a lack of urban development, inferior infrastructures, etc.) should be counter-balanced rather than compensated. Such counter-balancing development strategies may include the formation of dense urban clusters, in which individual urban settlements share essential socio-economic functions, and the redirecting of development priorities on a step-by-step basis. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.