Research articlePopulation age structure and the cost of municipal waste collection. A case study from the Czech Republic

- Age structure and municipal solid waste expenditure were investigated.
- Various age categories contribute to waste expenditure in a different manner.
- People around retirement age contribute most to waste expenditure.

Waste management is a common public service whose provision is the responsibility of local governments. As is usual with public services, the question of its efficiency naturally arises. The majority of studies focus on such efficiency from the perspective of the provider. This is based on the assumption that waste collection expenditure is a function of available equipment and municipal characteristics. In our opinion this approach has its limitations, and therefore we have used a novel approach based on the demand from municipal citizens for waste collection services. We build on previous results obtained from data concerning social and demographic characteristics, and focus on the relationship between age and expenditure on municipal solid waste, concentrating specifically on the ageing of the population. The ageing of societies in general is a very topical issue, but there is rather little focus in research on the effects of ageing on the demand for various public services. The research that does exist in the area of waste management that takes the age factor into account typically only makes a very rough division of the population into age categories such as children, people of working age and elderly people. Such wide groups naturally contain people with a large variety of needs, and therefore often lead to ambiguous results. The goal of our paper is to examine this topic in more detail, and to estimate the effects of various age categories of municipal citizens on municipal waste expenditure. We use models with age categories differentiated by decades, an approach which provides significantly more detailed information than the age variables used in other studies in this area. We use population age and waste management expenditure data collected from more than 6100 municipalities in the Czech Republic in 2011 and 2014. The results of our investigation have shown that senior citizens of a certain age (approximately at the onset of retirement) have a surprisingly strong influence on waste management expenditure.