Applied Demography

An Introduction To Basic Concepts, Methods, And Data

Steve H. Murdock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429715242
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

This text aims to help the novice understand demographic variables and analyze their impact on specific private and public sector interests. Examples are employed to demonstrate a wide range of techniques, and the book discusses software products from the 1990 US census that may revolutionize the use of demographic data by business and government.

1
Introduction

Rationale and Background

Demography has been popularized as it has become evident that demographic characteristics and trends impact many aspects of our society. Population change and the characteristics of the population have effects on a wide range of factors, including markets for private goods and services (Pol, 1987), forms of urban and regional growth (Berry and Kasarda, 1977), the potential for economic development (Backman, 1989), the likely incidence of disease and mortality (Murdock et al., 1989a), and political redistricting and voting patterns (Hill and Kent, 1988). Population patterns affect levels of economic resources and poverty (Macunovich and Easterlin, 1990), incidences of crime (Cohen and Felson, 1979; Stahura and Sloan, 1988), characteristics of the labor force (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1989), changes in enrollments in elementary and secondary schools and in higher education (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1989), changes in housing and real estate patterns (Sternlieb and Hughes, 1986; Murdock and Hamm, 1988a), and numerous other factors (Russell, 1984; Merrick and Tordella, 1988). Demography is important to those involved in product and service marketing, strategic and corporate planning, urban and regional analyses, real estate development, economic development, medical and health care, political analysis, financial analysis, crime prevention, personnel and human resource development, education, and many other fields.

It is not the population patterns and trends themselves that are the focus of attention for such persons, however, but the implications of these trends for nondemographic factors and events. Applied demography thus focuses on pragmatic concerns of interest to professionals whose training and experience lie largely outside the small community of professional demographers.

In fact, recognition of the importance of demographics is so pervasive that nearly all professionals involved in private- or public-sector marketing and planning use demographic data and perform demographic analysis. Many have been forced to gain knowledge of demographic processes and concepts, learn how to obtain and manipulate demographic data, and master demographic analysis techniques. These professionals often find themselves needing to locate information to profile the current characteristics of the population of alternative market or service areas; estimate the current and project future populations likely to effect the demand for goods and services; and to identify and quantify the effects of age, race/ethnicity, household composition, and other factors on the use of goods and services. Even when they are not directly responsible for the development of demographic data and analyses (because the data are purchased from private data provision firms), these analysts are usually responsible for ensuring that the data and analyses are appropriate. Such analysts must obtain knowledge of the demographic concepts, data sources, and the techniques underlying the data and analyses that have been purchased.

Unfortunately, these professionals often find it difficult to obtain the knowledge required to complete such tasks, because it is scattered among a number of courses offered in formal demographic training programs in academic settings or is available in a growing but widely scattered set of materials in applied demography (Rives and Serow, 1984; Pol, 1987; Saunders, 1988; Merrick and Tordella, 1988). Information on data sources are even more difficult to locate because it is part of many different academic and applied fields of study but unique to no single discipline (Murdock and Hamm, 1988b). In sum, practitioners have found that no single source exists to address their needs.

Many professional demographers who were formally trained in academic settings are becoming increasingly involved in the applied uses of demography and are finding their formal training has not properly prepared them to complete the tasks required of them in an applied setting. For example, although they may have had several courses that have provided them with indepth information on alternative techniques for completing regression analyses, they may have had as little as a single class period in a demographic methods course on techniques of population estimation. In this class period they may have only examined such techniques as they are applied to nations or states rather than small areas such as counties, places, or census tracts. They are likely to find, however, that the formulation of population estimates for such small areas is among those tasks most often required of them.

They may also find that they are required to extend their demographic knowledge far beyond the areas pursued in their graduate training. This training may have required them to complete analyses of the effects of demographic factors on social stratification and inequality, segregation, suburbanization, and levels of socioeconomic development. They are likely to have reviewed numerous studies of the interrelationships between fertility control and economic development, the determinants of mortality differentials, and the factors affecting the adoption of contraception or abortion practices. They are much less likely to have examined analyses of the effects of migration on the market for multi-family housing, the effects of changing racial/ethnic composition on retail markets, or the implications of differential rates of population growth on the need to relocate a public health clinic. Professional demographers new to the world of applied research may find themselves searching unsuccessfully for a source that brings together the information they are likely to require on a frequent basis.

This book attempts to meet the needs of both those who are not trained in demography, but who are increasingly required to either do demographic analyses or evaluate the results of such analyses, and of those who have been trained in demography but require more information on its applied dimensions. It does this by providing an introduction to: (1) demographic concepts and processes as used in demography and applied demography; (2) sources and typical applied uses of the most widely used demographic data; and (3) techniques for analyzing demographic patterns and the effects of demographic factors on socioeconomic conditions and characteristics. Its intent is to provide one of the first relatively comprehensive single-source introductions to the concepts, methods, and data of applied demography. We begin this task by defining and delineating the subject matter of applied demography.

Definition and the Dimensions of Applied Demography

An important starting point for any work is the definition of its subject matter, in this case, applied demography. Applied demography must be seen as a part of the broader field of demography. However, within neither demography nor applied demography is there universal agreement concerning the definition of what is, and what is not, a proper area for demographic analysis. Therefore, the reader should be aware that the definitions provided here do not necessarily represent a consensus among demographers about the definition of demography or applied demography.

The overall field of demography can be simply defined as the study of human populations. Hauser and Duncan (1959), however, note that demography has maintained two parallel traditions. One is the domain of formal demography which has focused on the precise mathematical measurement of the three demographic processes of fertility, mortality, and migration. The sources of change in these processes, the trends in these processes, the differentials in these processes, and the interrelationships among these processes form the major emphases in formal demography. The study of formal demographic processes is often closely associated with mathematical demography. Formal demography is an important but rather specialized subfield within demography.

The second tradition in demography is broader and has a larger number of adherents. It examines the determinants and consequences of the demographic processes and of the size, distribution, and composition of the populations that result from them. Thus social demography can be defined as the study of the determinants and consequences of population size, distribution, and composition and of the demographic processes of fertility, mortality, and migration that determine them. The emphases within this area of study has been on examining the interrelationships between demographic variables and other social and economic variables. This concept of demography is dominant in most academic departments teaching demography in the United States. By comparison to formal demography, social demography represents a substantial broadening of the subject matter of demography.

In many regards, applied extension of demography from examined in social demography. demography represents a further the broader issues and dimensions As Rives and Serow note,

In our view, applied demography is that branch of the discipline (of demography) that is directed toward the production, dissemination, and analysis of demographic and closely related socioeconomic information for quite specific purposes of planning and reporting. To distinguish "applied" pursuits from other lines of demographic inquiry, we would further suggest that applied demography is more concerned with the measurement and interpretation of current and prospective population change than with the behavioral determinants of this change. . . .

Applied demography almost always deals with information on population size, growth and composition for specific geographic areas. Thus there is an identifiable difference in the unit of analysis: Applied demographers tend to focus on geographic units and their population characteristics, while others are more concerned with individuals and their demographic behavior (1984: 9-10).

Applied demography is thus different than the broader field of demography in its relative emphases within the content areas of demography. Rives and Serow (1984), suggest several emphases that they believe separate the applied from the more basic aspects of the discipline. We add to the areas delineated by Rives and Serow (items 2, 3, and 5 below) and suggest that the differences between basic and applied demography can be seen in terms of different emphases within the following dimensions:

1. Scientific goal - Science can be seen as having three primary goals: description, explanation, and prediction. Demography as a basic science tends to emphasize explanation with secondary emphases on description and prediction. Applied demography tends to emphasize prediction, followed by description and explanation. In addition, many applied uses of demography attempt to establish concomitant demographic factors (e.g., for profiling market segments). Such "coincidental" occurrences are seldom the focus of basic demographic analyses.
2. Time referent - Basic demography may examine demographic phenomena for historical, current, or future time periods, but most frequently tends to involve attempts to explain past events. Applied demography tends to place emphasis on current and future patterns.
3. Geographic focus - Basic demography often attempts to explain either international- or national-level patterns. Applied demography tends to examine patterns for subnational areas such as county and/or subcounty areas (e.g., blocks, tracts). In addition, although general demographic analyses are nearly equally likely to employ aggregate areal data and data on individuals, applied demographic analyses place very heavy reliance on aggregate areal data (or small areas.
4. Purpose of the analyses - The science of demography in its basic form tends to emphasize analyses intended to generate basic knowledge about the causes of demographic change which can be generalized as widely as possible across as many different types of areas as possible. In applied demographic analyses, the emphasis is on the application of knowledge to discern the consequences or concomitants of demographic change rather than on basic knowledge generation. Applied demographic analyses often use data to discern the extent to which the findings from general studies of other areas apply to a specific study area.
5. Intended use of analytical results - Basic demography is intended primarily to enhance the base of knowledge in the discipline, knowledge which is shared among scholars within the discipline. The results of applied demographic analyses are intended to inform decisionmaking among non-demographers relative to the planning, development, and/or distribution of public- or private-sector goods or services.

Taken together, these emphases suggest that applied demography can be defined as

the study of population size, distribution, and composition and of the processes of fertility, mortality, and migration in a specified study area or areas with emphases on gaining knowledge of the consequences and concomitants of demographic change to guide decisionmaking related to the planning, development, and/or distribution of public- or private-sector goods or services for current and future use in the study area or areas.

As such a definition suggests, applied demography requires knowledge of both the basic science of demography and the means by which it can be applied to address pragmatic and policy-related questions.

The content of applied demography may also be examined by describing the demographic variables on which its analyses tend to concentrate. These variables include both demographic and those found to have such close relationships to demographic variables that it is common practice to include them in almost any demographic profiling of an area. These variables are

• -population size
• -population change
• -mortality
• -fertility
• -migration (both national and international)
• -population distribution (relative to metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, central cities and suburbs, rural and urban areas, by the population size, density of settlement, and among blocks, tracts, etc. of an area)
• -compositional characteristics
  • age
  • sex/gender
  • race
  • ethnicity
  • marital status (including never married, married, separated, divorced, and widowed)
  • household and family types (including family and nonfamily households and family and nonfamily households by sex and marital status of householder [head] and presence and/or number of children)
  • educational status (both years and degrees completed)
  • employment by
    • -status (employed, unemployed or underemployed)
    • -occupation
    • -industry
  • income, wealth, and poverty
  • socioeconomic status (summative measures using income, education, and occupational variables).

Of these variables, the education, employment, income, and socioeconomic status variables might be considered as social and economic rather than demographic variables. However, common practice has so often included them in demographic analyses that it is essential for those wishing to do applied demographic analyses to be familiar with the data sources and measures of these variables. Qearly other analysts might include additional variables or delete some of the variables noted here, but we believe that such variables are sufficiently encompassing that, if one has gathered data and completed analyses of these variables for an area, one can be said to have completed a relatively complete demographic analysis of an area. Consideration of these variables relative to the applied dimensions noted above can thus be seen as delineating the content of applied demography. The description of the content and trends in these variables, the sources of data on them, and the measures and techniques for analyzing them is the focus of this book.

Organization of the Text

In the remainder of Chapter 1, we describe the organization of the text and delineate the limitations of the work. In so doing, we attempt to introduce readers to key dimensions examined in the work and alert them to topics for which additional references should be consulted. At the end of the work, references to additional detailed sources are provided.

Chapter 2 defines and delineates the major trends in each demographic concept covered in the work. As noted above, these include the basic demographic variables of population change, age, sex, race/ethriicity, household, family, and marital status, population size, geographic patterns of population distribution, and the three demographic processes of fertility, mortality, and migration. Also examined are variables closely related to the basic demographic variables, including employment status, occupation, industry, income, education, and socioeconomic status. These variables are defined and the trends in such variables likely to impact factors of interest to applied demographers are described. As a result of examining this chapter, the reader should obtain a basic understanding of demographic variables and of the role of such variables in altering socioeconomic factors of relevance to applied private- and public-sector interests.

Chapter 3 examines the sources of data on the variables described in Chapter 2. National and international, state and local, and private data sources are described. The discussion includes an examination of the forms of data available and of the limitations in obtaining and using such data. A detailed examination of the data products from the 1990 Census is presented and an analysis of the implications of these products for data use is provided.

The next section describes measures and techniques for analyzing the variables discussed ...