The Core-Periphery Analysis as to Socioeconomic Characteristics: The Case of Ankara

In recent decades, socioeconomic inequalities have become increasingly noticeable at international, national and regional scales. Strikingly, a significant number of countries have been characterized by a division between dynamic and growing metropolitan areas and shrinking and declining rural regions. Relatedly, the Territorial Agenda 2020 of the EU states explicitly that “the core-periphery division is still present”. Increasing socioeconomic inequalities are more apparent within the prosperous metropolises and there has been an increasing socioeconomic differentiation between core and periphery regarding income, employment, and socioeconomic characteristics. Metropolitan areas have been experiencing population growth within the urban core, driven primarily by younger, better-educated and higher income people, in contrast to the peripheral areas witnessing an ageing, poorly-educated and low-income population. This differentiation occurring between core and periphery of metropolitan areas and their distribution across space may bring challenging issues for the governments to deal with. The aim of the study is to figure out how much core and periphery differentiate from each other in terms of their socioeconomic characteristics. As a case study, Ankara metropolitan area is analyzed considering the variables of age groups, sex, level of education, household structure, employment, and political views in district level. Ankara metropolitan area have totally 25 districts. The core is defined as the inner metropolitan area, including eight central districts, and the periphery as the outer area, including 17 districts mainly defined by their rural characteristics. In the empirical part of the study, the socioeconomic characteristics of the core and the periphery are compared by using the Turkish Statistical Institute’s data set. The statistical analysis of socioeconomic variation is realized via recently available economic and social data for the 25 districts and cluster analysis is used for the classification of the districts. By analyzing the districts using the economic and social variables, a district pattern of socioeconomic differentiation of Ankara metropolitan area is revealed.