Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic

Rural areas are supposed to be the ones with the least favourable population development prospects in terms of ageing, proportion of economically active persons, the level of education, and migration balance in the Czech Republic. The problem which is also being witnessed in other European countries asks for an appropriate policy response to precede the spatially unbalanced development causing structural problems in certain areas. The paper gives an overview of policy tools aimed at the revival of a healthy population dynamics in rural areas on a national level (i.e. Structural Funds, LEADER+ programme, national programmes). Secondly, it provides a comparison of the localisation of the above mentioned programmes with the repartition of rural areas in the Czech Republic. At the same time, the basic demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the population in urban, suburban and rural areas are presented. This approach helps to clarify who benefits from the programmes mentioned and whether the more distant rural areas profit from these programmes the same way as the areas economically connected with urban centres.