The ‘Uneven and combined development’ of elderly care in Central and South-East Europe

Abstract

The article examines the development dynamics of elderly care in countries along the core–semi-periphery–periphery axis. The geographical scope of the study is framed by international migration flows, focusing on four countries in Central and South-East Europe: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Austria, and Germany. The article demonstrates that, although their development trajectories vary, these countries together exemplify what Trotsky termed ‘uneven and combined development’. In addition to the analytical study, we use two variables (from Eurostat and the World Bank) to illustrate how the social economies of core, semi-periphery, and periphery countries are related. The two variables indicate that, while the relative differences between the countries are decreasing, the absolute differences are increasing. The ‘snowball effect’ helps explain the region’s uneven and combined development, in which inefficient and wasteful social economies – particularly in the core countries – play a role in addition to economic disparities between countries.