Systems of classifying the geographic areas.

Discernment of population size rarely is sufficient for planning or research needs. Information on population dispersion and density often is wanted for policy decisions in initiating, maintaining, or modifying the welter of social systems to provide basic services to the population. The dispersion and density measures logically presuppose the existence of well-defined borders for territories. Initially one would expect that political/administratively defined or statistically defined areal units to be readily identifiable and easily referenced. Such is not always the case.

Two systems of areal classification are used in presentation of population counts. The first system classified population by geographic division; total country, major civil divisions, and within each of these variously defined minor civil divisions.

In the U.S., Congress has the responsibility for setting boundaries of major civil divisions states and territories. The Congress either directly or by default regulates to the states responsibility for establishing the respective minor divisions i.e. counties or municipalities. The same principle of primary and secondary responsibility and authority operates between state and local governments.

In United States there are 50 states; these are the major civil divisions. Each state is divided into minor civil divisions counties, parishes, or census divisions. Within the county further minor civil divisions are recognized. There is marked variation in the criteria used to define these units. Minor civil divisions include such diverse groupings as towns, townships, unincorporated places, incorporated places, cities, and city wards. For a study in a particular point in time, such classifications may be useful, but over time their value changes; it is difficult to maintain continuity for a fixed geographic area as boundaries and their definitions change. Sometimes the population size in an area is too small to warrant collection of detailed information on the inhabitants. In United States, classification of geographic units builds from smallest unit to largest, for instance, enumeration districts, census tracts, cities, minor civil divisions, counties, state, metropolitan areas, economic areas, economic sub-regions, and economical regions.

The second system of classification focuses on statistical areal units, the identifying principle is locality and the number of inhabitants with the purpose of delineating areas which are relatively homogeneous on some characteristic or combination of characteristics. Such classifications combine contiguous areas or colligations of noncontiguous areas with "like" characteristics. Such a principle operates in classifying schemes such as state economic areas, metropolitan economic areas, functional economic areas, standard metropolitan area. 

Add comments about spatial, geographical, statistical, political areal units serve as surrogate indicators of community.

The State Economic Area is a classificatory scheme developed for the United States Bureau of Census by Donald Bogue. It was first employed in 1950. Classification system has been used in succeeding censuses in city, regional, and sub-regional studies. The State Economic Areas "relatively homogeneous subdivisions of the states. They consist of single counties or groups of counties that have similar economic and social characteristics. There are two principal types of State Economic Areas, the metropolitan and the nonmetropolitan. The former consists of the larger standard metropolitan statistical areas except that when an SMSA was located in two or more economic sub-regions, each part became a separate State Economic Area." Shryock & Siegel. P.127.

Metropolitan Economic Areas and Functional Economic Areas are classificatory schemes of sub-regions based on the journey to work data. Developed by Brian Barry from the 1960 U.S. Census data, MEA’s are composites of existing standard metropolitan statistical areas and entire counties added to them. The counties are added on the basis of worker commuting rates. The Functional Economic Areas are sub-regions which entail 350 areas around cities which are smaller and then standard metropolitan statistical areas. Bogue & Beal. Economic Areas of the US. 1961.

Standard Metropolitan Areas was a classificatory system used by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 1950 and by various government agencies prior to that. The SMA’s succeeded the use of "metropolitan districts" used or 1900 to 1940. For more detail on SMA see 1950 U.S. Census.

Bureau of Economic Analysis sub areas are defined by personal income, employment, and population measures, as well as large water regions and sub-regions designated by Water Resource Council. BEAs have the following functional characteristics: 1) labor market and labor supply are combined, that is, the area is both the place of work and the residence of the labor force, and 2) both export and residentiary industries are located in the areas.

As in the case of MEA’s and FEA’s, standard metropolitan statistical areas were used to denote economic centers and journey to work. For more detail on standard metropolitan statistical areas consult the 1960 bureau census definitions.

Rural-urban classifications.

To focus on areas of residence rather than statistical areal units, five classificatory criteria typically are employed to designate urban areas. 1)administrative divisions, often quite stable over time, established by government regulatory bodies, 2) places in the minimum specified number of inhabitants or places of a specified density, 3) places, agglomerations, or localities within principal or autonomous administrative control, 4) areas with social, economic, physical or some other traits deemed as requisite concomitants of urban style of social organization and social life, and 5)areas was some specified proportion of the actively employed population engaged in on agricultural activities. Rural areas to be defined by default, that is residuals of population not classified as urban.

Operational definitions for specifying urban/rural areas stem from efforts of social scientists to distinguish between urbanization, that is, the increased concentration of people living in area or the multiplication of areas called urban , and urbanism, that is, constellation of traits alleged to be products of a mode of social organization found uniquely among individuals living in densely settled areas. On the other hand, social demographers use the rural- urban continuum as a heuristic device to describe social and historical changes in a particular country or to compare different countries at some point in time on their relative degree of social, economic, or demographic development. To definitions of urban have been used in the United States census.

Definition of urban areas (census and vital statistics).

Definition of urbanized areas.

 Density

Size is sometimes confused with density. Review density and pathology of behavior hypothesis.

Size and Optimum Population--Review models

Age and Sex Composition

A population it is presented using a population pyramid.

We previously noted that age and sex are distributive characteristics of the population which define some basic potential activities of the social order since age and sex define role behaviors of a society. One technique to summarize the age and sex composition of a population is the population pyramid. The population pyramid is a pictorial/graphic presentation of a population by age and sex categories. First, we obtain data on a population distribution by age and sex. These data are usually found in census reports/ enumerations of a population. Second, calculate the total population contained in each age and sex groupings. The sum of all percentages should be expressed as 100 percent. The sum of all age/sex group frequencies should equal the total population size. To construct a population pyramid use standard graph paper. On the horizontal axis calibrate the percentages. On the vertical axis calibrate the age groups.  Start displaying percentages at 0 percent at the intercept of the horizontal and vertical axes. Let the male percentages be expressed to the left; let female percentages be expressed to the right. Start with the age group 0-4 at the bottom of the graph plotting each age group, building upward until you reach the oldest age group which is typically 100 years plus. The population pyramid shows graphically the age-sex components of a given population for given point in time. By superimposing two sets of figures it is possible to show the relative difference between each set of figures within each sex and age grouping. A key is usually presented such that each set of figures receives a shading code. For instance, whites are left blank and nonwhites are shaded or vice versa. If whites have a higher percentage of population in a particular age/sex group then a blank area extends beyond the shaded area. The same exercise can be performed comparing the two sets of figures on population for two different years of observation say for instance 1990 and 2000 Census age. There are software packages which can generate population pyramids.

Reliability of the age data.

Age data typically suffer from three sources of error: 1) inadequate coverage, 2) failure to report age, and 3) misreporting of age. Mis- reporting of age includes erroneous allocation of individual to age categories by census officials, erroneous coding of individual ages by enumerators, and erroneous reporting of age by respondents.

There is a tendency to report ages ending in 0 and 5.

The older the age, the greater the tendency of age heaping.

"Test for age heaping: take the distribution of ages by single years, from under 1 to 99, which most modern censuses publish, and ignore the very few who have passed their 100^th birthday or those whose ages are unreported. If all of the ages were known and reported correctly, almost exactly 10 percent of the total should be in the first year of age and the others ending in 0, another 10 percent in the ages exactly divisible by 5, 40 percent in the other even-numbered ages, and the remaining 40 percent in the odd-numbers not divisible exactly by 5. Thus all of the tendencies to concentrate mentioned above should reduce the percentages in the last of the four age categories. Consequently, by comparing the total number of persons reported in age groups 1,3,7, etc., through 99, with the figure corresponding to 40 percent of the total, one may secure an indicator of the reliability with which ages have been reported. Perfect reporting would produce a score of 100, whereas any concentration on the ages ending in 0, 5, or the other even-numbered would produce an index of less than 100. The greater the error, the smaller the score." T. Lynn Smith and Paul Zopf. Demography. 1970. Pp. 152-154.

Add calculations.

There are a number of other strategies for evaluating age errors in reporting, sometimes called age preference or age avoidance. These strategies are called the Whipple index, Myers’ blended method , Bachi's index, Carrier’s index, and Ramachandran’s index. Each of these indices presume some particular type of distribution for true age in the population, some weight such a distribution with a reference to actual ages, and then compute the degree of convergence or divergence reported ages from that presumed age distribution. These indices are goodness of fit tests.

One can also eye-ball the age-sex distribution by single years for successive censuses and ascertain whether errors of reporting age have occurred.

The selected relationships between birth rates, death rates, natural increase, and the average age of the population.

Between time 1 and time 2: as the death rates decrease, and the birth rates increase, and natural increase increases, the average age of the population will become younger.
Between time 1 and time 2: as the death rates increase, and the birth rates decrease, and natural increase decreases the average age of the population will become older.
Notions of stable and stationary population.

Some indirect measures based on population pyramid.

Sex ratio = (M_x/F_x) * 100, where x= age.

Factors affecting the sex ratio:

Sex ratio of births runs between 105 and 108. Death rate of males is higher than the death rate of females at all ages. Males more so than females engage in long-range migration. Females more so than males engage in short range migration. Older average age of population in general lowers the sex ratio.

Another measure on sex composition is called masculinity proportion which is defined as proportion of males divided by total population times 100 equals masculinity proportion of proportion of 50 percent indicates a balance between males and females in the population

Another measure estimates the access or deficit of males as a percent of the total population. Male population minus female population divided by total population times 100 equals the percent difference by sex for the total population of positive value connotes access to males, and negative value indicates male deficits.

Index of youth = (P_0-4/P_15-64)*1000

Index of aged = (P₆₅₊/P_15-64)*1000

Burden ratio = ((P_0-4+P₆₅₊)/P_15-64)*1000

Child-woman dependency ratio = (P_0-4/_femaleP_15-44)*1000

Under the weak ergodicity principle, population pyramids assume a fixed shape when birth and death rates are constant and no migration occurs over time. This constancy in the proportionate age-sex distribution over time is called a stable population.

A stationary population occurs when the births equal the deaths, no migration occurs, age-sex specific death rates and age-specific birth rates remain constant over time.

Compositional Measures

In this section of the course we examine social, demographic, and economic characteristics which define the social composition of the population. These characteristics include ascribed and achieve statuses. Ascribed statuses are socially identifiable traits presumed to be part of the core of an individual’s social identity, usually fixed at birth, and assumed to be a relatively long-term duration. Sex, race, and other identifiable characteristics transferred to the individual by accident to birth, are examples of ascribe statuses. Achieved statuses are those social and socially identifiable traits presumed to be more transitory and more malleable features of one’s identity, and usually depend on an individual’s association with or participation in a given type social relationship. Such characteristics include marital status, occupation, education, and personal income. The number of ascribed and achieve statuses is quite large and varied, only those selected characteristics are discussed which are used frequently by social scientists and which are listed as priority items when gathering information on persons in census/enumerations, surveys, or registrations.

Race and ethnicity

Most, if not all, societies invoke racial criteria for stereotyping individuals as members of particular subgroups. Such stereotypes are used as qualifiers or inhibitors for participation within a variety of social relationships. Such stereotypes also reflect either cultural values which encourage social and physical separation of different subgroups of population, for instance, segregation or apartheid, or values which foster some degree of social mixture or blending between different population subgroups in the society, such as, cultural pluralism, melting pot, or Anglo conformity.

Race and ethnicity, then, are the social criteria for discriminatory practices that favor one subgroup at the expense of another. Such differential treatment results in altering the relative life chances of various subgroups in achieving economic success, selection of adequate housing, maintaining stable family relationships, guaranteeing health, or simply surviving. Population statistics on racial and ethnic composition can be used by policymakers to identify selected subgroups in need of support to allocate required social resources to them; or following alternative philosophy, use information to exploit specific groups. So also can sociology use statistics on racial composition to better understand social policies governing intergroup behavior, the consequences of such policies, and the alternative processes of social adjustment.

Concepts of race and ethnicity are not amenable to quick unambiguous definition. Professionals in the biological behavioral sciences have long recognized the absence of any criteria that provide universal definition of race permitting identification of mutually exclusive population subgroups. Often the term race goes without definition literature. Nonetheless, enough consensus exists within each particular culture on how various racial terms are applied, so that are some utility and cross-referencing race with other kinds of information on personal characteristics.

United Nations recognizes and recommends the racial definitions employed in the census be specified so that the meaning is a readily apparent to data users. Information on race is gathered into ways (1) enumerator ascertains the respondents social identity based on his or her understanding the prevailing criteria used in that particular culture, and (2) to the respondent designates it is or her own identity, a process called self enumeration.

In United States from 1790-1950 information on race was obtained by the enumerator. In the census of 1960 and of 1970 self-enumeration was used. Of the two procedures self-enumeration is more accurate. 

Since 1790 data have been gathered to provide a nominal race-color classification of white vs. nonwhite. In the census of 1790, nonwhites were found in the categories "all other free persons" and "slaves." With successive administrations of the census, as specific racial and ethnic subgroups became socially visible, acquiring economic and political importance, the nonwhite classification was expanded to include Negroes, American Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Asian Indians, Malayans, Eskimos, Aleuts, and so forth. Whites are categorized as persons of Mexican birth or ancestry neither Indians nor nonwhite.

Different strategies for collecting information on race and changes in the definition of race and territories covered by the census make it difficult to evaluate errors in classification over time, particularly among the subgroups included in be nonwhite classification. Fairly good agreement, however, is found in reporting of information for whites and nonwhites and more recent censuses.

Two simple strategies are employed for presenting population statistics on racial composition. The first is the use of a percentage distribution already discussed in earlier lectures. The second is mapping location and concentration of various subgroups across some aerial unit. To compare the relative differences between percentages of racial subgroups, the simple measures described as follows are used. Various indices of segregation have been put forth based on data for different sized area units such as states, counties, enumeration districts, census tracts, or blocks. Of these various indices, the most preferred as the index of dissimilarity.

To describe racial and ethnic composition using population data simple calculate a percentage distribution. Percentage distributions for various subgroups of population may be examined using an index of the dissimilarity. This is a summary index that expresses the degree of similarity or difference between two distributions by race without making comparisons between each of the subgroups. The index of dissimilarity is obtained by summing the absolute difference between percentages in each racial group and dividing the sum by two. The value obtained when percentages are compared will range between 0 and 100 and when comparing proportions ranges between 0 and 1. The index of dissimilarity measures the unevenness of residential distributions by race.

And index value of 100 means that the area examined is completely homogeneous, that heirs, populated by a single race grew. A value of 0 means that the residential area is intermixed, 50-50.

Sociologist and anthropologist agree that the key notion in defining ethnicity is that individuals possess a sense of communality or people-hood and exhibit a similarity in cultural heritage, that is, a shared style of life in customs, address, language, or in some cases religion. In light of the numerous traits used to defined ethnicity, it is often are required to use combinations of characteristics which indirectly identify and reflect an individual’s nationality-citizenship or cultural background.

Nationality usually has two meanings: (1) one’s country of present citizenship through an accident birth or through naturalization and (2) to one’s country of origin. Items asking for information on nationality and citizenship may be treated singularly or in combination to indicate nativity. For instance, information on respondent’s country of birth and country of mother and father may be cross- referenced to designate nativity of parents. If an individual is foreign born the country of birth must be specified.

Since 1850 country are birth has been asked in U.S. Censuses with nativity of parents asked since 1870. From 1910 to 1950 information and published on nativity has been limited to foreign born lights and cross tabulated for minor civil divisions. Such data are important for historically describing the countries of origin and ethnic composition of successive waves of immigration to the United States as well as for identifying where individual ethnic groups have settled on this country.

By analyzing United States region by region some knowledge of the ethnic and religious affiliation of the population may be obtained. That is both ethnic and religious affiliation of subgroups of the American population or crudely reflected in the geographical distribution of the population. As of the case of race, one means of presentation of data on ethnicity is mapping. The places of settlement of race, religious, and ethnic groups may be plotted and graphically displayed.

Mapping not only allows a discussion of religion or at the domination of a given region in some areas, for instance, in the South the Baptist belt or the Bible due to the concentration of Protestant fundamentalists but also a glimpse into the successive of Westward flow of migrating and ethno-religious subgroups through history.

The English population of United States, due to language and cultural compatibilities, historically has been the most evenly distributed ethnic group in geographic space. Coequal with wide geographic dispersion was the rapid assimilation and disappearance of distinctly British subgroups.

Non- British groups of migrants to the United States have not had the social, political, and economic advantages of English-speaking groups. European immigration, some as late as the 1920s, accounts for some of geographical concentrations of subgroups of the population. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Polish immigrants settlement in enclaves in widely dispersed areas.

Nativity, when cross referenced with other personal characteristics, permits analysis of various ethnic groups adjustment and assimilation into the mainstream American life.

In some census these legal nationality and also was asked to determine if the respondent was a naturalized citizen. In those cases where the individuals naturalized, information was sought on duration of time since the individual had come to the country to establish permanent residence. Typically alien status only was referenced for foreign born persons

Language also is used as an indicator of ethnicity. Fluency in language usually is interpreted as meaning the individual was raised as a native speaker or had spent sufficient time as a residence and country destination to adopt not only a language that some of the cultural patterns of that country. Language usually is classified as (1) mother’s tongue, that is, a language usually spoken in a child’s home in childhood, (2) usual language, that is, language most often spoken in a child’s home or current language, and (3) ability to speak designated numbers of languages.

Next three sections education occupation and income.

Education.

Education is one of the key social institutions in society. It provides a setting outside of the family: for learning additional modes of behavior necessary for successful adjustment as future adults, for instilling basic ideological believes consistent with those valued by power-status groups with vested interests and major social institutions in the society, and for allocating individuals to occupations of different status based on technical skills acquired. The level of education attained in the society is related to rapidity of demographic change as well as the degree of modernization. Sociologists long have noted that the population must attain literacy before social and economic development can occur and for modernization to occur and to continue the level of education in a society must be continually upgraded. For policy-makers then and what individuals or groups of population are exposed to a course of training and education, who continues in school or drops out, and who completes their education by great and level, are important data for developing statistics to assess future social and economic growth in a country.

Statistics on educational composition of the population are grouped by the census in three categories: (1) measures of education input, that is, actual enrollment in school, or any grade, for specific types of school either public or private; (2) measures of educational progress, that is retention, acceleration, or a dropout in a grade, or from grade to grade: (3) measures of educational output, that is, literacy, level of attainment, and educational qualifications. These data are obtained from school system reports, censuses, and surveys. School system reports are collected for classrooms, schools, administrative units, basic political units, graduates, financial concerns, and characteristics of the physical plant. Census data and survey data typically ask about enrollment, literacy, and level or grade of education completed.

The U.S. census has asked questions about school enrollment since 1840. Data are usually categorized by single grades or years of school for population at preschool age and up to them through age 35. In or more recent years the age range for attending school has expanded. Measures of enrollment usually are expressed as a rates for population experiencing events, such as crude enrollment rate, general enrollment rate, age-specific and level specific enrollment rates, and age specific great specific enrollment rates.

See pages 26 and 27 for statistics on educational progression and educational attainment.

Economic composition.

Sociologists are interested in the economic composition of the population, since the economic order impinges so heavily on other social institutions in society. The kinds of economic activity performed by individuals directly influence their basic life chances. Much of the data gathered focus on the availability of or actual employment of people in the production of goods and services in the distribution of goods and availability of services to the marketplace in their consumption.

Manpower it usually defined to focus on who is actively engaged or not order was seeking employment for the production of goods and services. Actively employed persons typically are categorized by the recentcy of their job, i.e., current, or last job, or usual job. Job characteristics are classified by occupation, i.e., that is the kind of work performed during the period of observation, industry, i.e., business activity of the establishment in which the economically active person’s job is located, and job status, i.e., employed are unemployed, or if employed whether a person is an owner, an account worker, employee, unpaid family worker, member for producers corporate, or persons not classifiable by status. Additional job characteristics analyze time reference for employment, such as, number of weeks last year, hours worked last week.

There are two basic types of data sources used for developing statistics on economic composition of the population. Samples and censuses usually reference features of the employed population and locate that information by respondent’s place of residence. The second type includes a variety of establishment statistics, such as social insurance plans, labor registrations, unemployment insurance, and various benefit funds. These data reference personal data on individuals by their place of work. Comparisons using both data sources must pay attention to the population covered as well as the time referents.

Traditional measures are used to describe economic composition of the population. These include crude economic activity rates, Age- sex specific activity rates, percentage distributions by various employment, occupational, industrial categories, and the ratio of work force to dependents. 

Income distribution.

Another major source of data on economic composition of the population is information on wealth that is distributed in the society and how that wealth once distributed is expanded. Information is usually obtained on personal income and family income. Two questions are typically asked one focuses on personal income in the other focuses on household characteristics. These data are cross-referenced to describe differences between households and earning capability and spending capacity.

Marital status.

Household structure.