Identifying trajectories of regional ‘left-behindness’ in the EU15 from 1982 to 2017

Abstract ‘Left behind places’ have received increasing attention in the Global North, acknowledging growing regional inequalities between and within countries. Yet the trajectories followed by these places have mostly been investigated by assessing changes between two distant time-points. Aiming to provide more detailed insights into regional development pathways, we combine k-means clustering and sequence analysis to study detailed regional trajectories between 1982 and 2017 for EU15 NUTS3 regions. The resulting typology of trajectories evidences how some regions have increasingly or more recently ‘fallen behind’, some have remained ‘left behind’, and still others have experienced overall positive change over decades, at least temporarily catching-up on wealthier regions. As such, our findings suggest different transitions in and out of demographic and economic ‘left-behindness’.