Target-Density Weighting Interpolation and Uncertainty Evaluation for Temporal Analysis of Census Data

Conducting temporal analysis of census data often requires applying areal interpolation to integrate data that have been spatially aggregated using incompatible zoning systems. This article introduces a method of areal interpolation, target-density weighting (TDW), that is useful for long-term temporal analysis because it requires only readily available historical data and basic geographic information system operations. Then, through regression analysis of a large sample of U.S. census tract data, a model is produced that relates the error in TDW estimates of tract population to four basic properties of tracts. An analysis of model residuals combined with theorized absolute limits on interpolation error yields formulas with which we can compute upper and lower prediction bounds on the population in a tract of one census at the time of a different census. These prediction intervals enable the interpretation of different interpolated estimates with appropriately varying degrees of uncertainty.     

Spatial Autocorrelation Statistics of Areal Prevalence Rates under High Uncertainty in Denominator Data

We propose a new estimator of spatial autocorrelation of areal incidence or prevalence rates in small areas, such as crime and health indicators, for correcting spatially heterogeneous sampling errors in denominator data. The approach is dubbed the heteroscedasticity‐consistent empirical Bayes (HC‐EB) method. As American Community Survey (ACS) data have been released to the public for small census geographies, small‐area estimates now form the demographic landscape of neighborhoods. Meanwhile, there is growing awareness of the diminished statistical validity of global and local Moran’s I when such small‐area estimates are used in denominator data. Using teen birth rates by census tracts in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, we present comparisons of conventional and new HC‐EB estimates of Global and Local Moran’s I statistics created on ACS data, along with estimates on ground truth values from the 2010 decennial census. Results show that the new adjustment method dramatically enhances the statistical validity of global and local spatial autocorrelation statistics.     

Local Labour Market Diversity and Business Innovation: Evidence from Irish Manufacturing Businesses

This paper estimates the effect of diversity within local labour markets on business-level innovation. Using survey data and Irish census data, the paper explores whether the diversity of human capital at county level is associated with higher innovation output. Diversity in age, nationality and educational attainment is measured using an index of heterogeneity and its effect on business innovation is estimated using an innovation production function approach. It is found that diversity in nationality and educational attainment is positively associated with the probability of a business product innovating. The findings also suggest that greater external labour market diversity and greater levels of internal third-level education may be substitutes. Where a business is in a diverse location, it may not require higher levels of educational attainment among its workforce to source knowledge for product innovation.     

Creating the 1831 Canadian Census Database

The 1831 census database is the newest addition to the series of 19th century Canadian census microdata available for social science research, thanks to a collaboration between the Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH) and FamilySearch. This article presents the work undertaken to prepare this database and the main challenges encountered in the course of this work. While the data extracted from the 1831 census are an invaluable tool for demographic research, particularly on account of the agricultural and industrial questions included in this census, cleaning these data have required particular attention to the age-sex-marital status tallies of the household co-residents. Additional efforts were devoted to integrating missing data for Montréal’s Notre-Dame parish and for other parishes.     

The role of contextual factors in the electoral resurgence of extreme right-wing forces in Spain: The case of Andalusia

Up until the end of 2018, extreme right-wing parties and their anti-immigration discourse, now a common occurrence in other European countries, had not appeared on the Spanish political scene. However, in December of that year, the Spanish extreme right-wing party VOX reversed this trend and made significant electoral gains in the Andalusian regional elections. This phenomenon has led us to analyse, in this study, the role played by contextual factors (i.e., out-group size, territorial concentration of the immigrant population, demographic change in settlement locations, aggregated educational level and unemployment rate among the receiving society) in the rise in the number of VOX voters. To achieve this, VOX's results from all the polling stations in Andalusia contained in its 5946 census tracts were analysed. At the same time, each census tract was associated with its demographic, economic and educational data, and their relationship was analysed using a multilevel analysis with Mplus. The results show that the presence of economic immigrants is indeed associated with a higher percentage of VOX voters in Andalusia. However, despite this general trend, those census tracts with a high territorial concentration of Maghrebi immigrants are associated with a lower percentage of support for this extreme right-wing party. The opposite is found for Romanian immigrants. Moreover, areas with larger percentages of people with a high level of education influenced greater support for VOX. Thus our findings suggest the traditional explanations for the increased support for extreme right-wing parties in northern Europe do not provide clear patterns that can be extrapolated to Andalusia.     

Bringing the Prisoner into View: English and Welsh Census Data and the Victorian Prison Population

The 1881 England and Wales census is now available as a fully-searchable electronic file. What can this source of big data tell us about the shape of the late-Victorian prison population? This article explores how the 1881 census compares to other sources of prison population data, and examines how the census can be analysed to reveal the demographic structure of the prison population in England and Wales. We argue that the census enables us to bring breadth of information about incarcerated individuals, identifying the ‘typical’ and ‘atypical’ prisoner, to a depth of information already available through small-scale qualitative research. In doing so, census data provides both quantitative and qualitative data essential for bringing context and scale to social and personal histories of crime.     

Time-space patterns of second-wave Irish immigration into British towns

"A time-space model, based on Hagerstrand's (1969) methodology, is used to illustrate the diffusion of a migration-stream into new areas at destination and the associated changes in community characteristics at different stages in the settlement sequence." Published regional census data and interviews with Irish-born residents of England provide data on Irish migration into and within Britain since the 1930s     

Spatial/temporal mismatch: a conflation protocol for Canada Census spatial files

The Canada census is one of the chief sources of demographic and socio-economic data for researchers in this country. Census variables are linked to geography files that allow researchers using geographic information systems (GIS) to view and analyze spatial data. Some of the most useful analysis, however, is based on changes in attribute values over time and space. Analysis of spatio- temporal events such as shifting migration patterns or changes in the distribution of health status permits a more dimensioned perspective than the viewing of static spatial phenomena. The analysis of spatio-temporal phenomena is limited by major changes in the spatial framework (e.g., location of road networks and other spatial entities) between national censuses. This paper addresses this limitation by (i) illustrating the extent of spatial mismatch between the 1996 and the 2001 census; (ii) examining attempts to rectify this problem in other jurisdictions and (iii) presenting a 'made-in-Canada' solution for conflation of census geometries. We believe that this solution will enhance the ability of Canadian researchers to describe and analyze socio-economic, health and demographic shifts across time and space. The research is supported by an ftp site for downloading the census geography rectification software presented in this paper.     

Geographic location and Aboriginal economic status: a census-based analysis of outstations in the Northern Territory

The demographic and economic characteristics of Aboriginal people in Australia's remotest locations are examined from 1986 Census data. There are three objectives: first to argue the case for examining Aboriginal society in spatial context: second, to demonstrate how census data can be manipulated to isolate meaningful spatial sub-categories; third to consider the extent to which extreme remote location is associated with distinct social and economic characteristics. The conclusion is that on the whole, remote location is reflected in lower economic status but not in demographic structure.     

Frozen Film and FOSDIC Forms: Restoring the 1960 U.S. Census of Population and Housing

In this article, the authors describe a collaboration of the Minnesota Population Center (MPC), the U.S. Census Bureau, and the National Archives and Records Administration to restore the lost data from the 1960 Census. The data survived on refrigerated microfilm in a cave in Lenexa, Kansas. The MPC is now converting the data to usable form. Once the restored data are processed, the authors intend to develop three new data sources based on the 1960 census. These data will replace the most inadequate sample in the series of public-use census microdata spanning the years from 1850 to 2000, extend the chronological scope of the public census summary files, and provide a powerful new resource for the Census Bureau and its Research Data Centers.     

Indecision Factors when Planning for Land Use Change

The 'Law of Anticipated Reactions' and its two extensions are applied to the Portuguese planning context in the decision-making process of choosing where to locate a major airport. My argument contends the fact that uncertainty, associated with indecision, in locating major infrastructure hubs constrains individual actions according to governments' perceived powers (uncertainty of preferences and uncertainty of sanctions). The relevance of knowing how to cope with these indecision factors in the location of major transportation hubs is important to establish ' a priori ' actions that can forecast urban problems and timely implement appropriate planning strategies. The two Portuguese municipalities most often mentioned as the most probable locations for the airport are used as case studies to analyse and discuss how indecision factors have been affecting land use change. The data sources used for the two municipalities are land use change, census information and number of development requirements. The data is contrasted with urban and regional plans to verify if indeed indecision associated with the location of this major airport was an important factor in speeding up land consumption in both areas.     

1928年安徽人口普查研究

通过梳理1928年安徽人口普查的背景、制度和执行情况,分析普查数据,可以得知此次人口普查执行得力,普查结果可信度较高。但由于种种原因,此次人口普查所得人口数量与实际人口仍有相当差距。利用以中国土地利用调查为代表的区域性人口抽样调查的结果,通过调整人口性别比可以对1928年安徽人口数量进行大概规模的复原。     

The North Atlantic Population Project: Progress and Prospects

The North Atlantic Population Project (NAPP) is a massive database of historical census microdata from European and North American countries. The backbone of the project is the unique collection of completely digitized censuses providing information on the entire enumerated populations of each country. In addition, for some countries, the NAPP includes sample data from surrounding census years. In this article, the authors provide a brief history of the project, describe their progress to data and plans for the future, and discuss some potential implications of this unique data resource for social and economic research.     

Lost in the Mail: the Inherent Errors of Mapping Australia Post Postcodes to ABS Derived Postal Areas

It is now common practice, by users of geographic information, to link data held at the postcode level to that obtained from the national census. This paper examines the relationship between Australia Post (AP) postcodes and Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) derived postal areas — which are an approximation of the former based on aggregated census collection districts (CDs). A group of adjacent ABS postal areas in northwest Melbourne was compared with the true AP postcode areas they purported to represent and the discrepancies were investigated. Firstly, shape mismatches were studied and their potential impacts upon resource allocation decisions were assessed. Next, comparisons of areas were undertaken. It was found that, in established inner city urban areas, the two sets of boundaries were highly correlated. However, outer suburban neighborhoods were identified as being particularly prone to major areal discrepancies. The implications of mismatches between these two key boundary data sources may be severe, given that management decisions and the allocation of public and private resources are often based on spatial statistical analyses which use these data sets. The authors acknowledge ABS efforts in providing information at the levels of aggregation that society demands. The introduction of ABS postal areas data has undoubtedly facilitated the use of demographic data in many sectors; it has, however, also caused some problems, for instance, when users assume that ABS postal areas are identical to AP postcodes. These issues could easily be avoided with the inclusion of more comprehensive metadata documentation accompanying ABS data. Research is continuing to develop a method by which agencies may derive common boundaries for their administrative units, yet still meet their own individual data and sampling requirements.     

改革开放以来上海社会空间结构演化的特征与趋势

基于第三次和第五次全国人口普查数据,采用因子生态分析方法,对1982年和2000年的上海社会空间结构以及改革开放以来上海社会空间结构演化的特征与趋势进行了研究。结果显示,1982年上海社会空间结构模式相对简单,市区和郊区各自具有较强的同质性;2000年社会空间结构则趋于复杂,异质性特征明显增强,各类社会区间的圈层分布成为主导模式,并呈现指状空间扩散特征。在此基础上,论文从能动者和结构两个层面揭示了上海社会空间结构演化的内在机制。     

The Mormon Historical Demography Project

Abstract

This article describes the background and reconstruction of the Belgian 1961 census sample file. Recently, a complete codebook for the sample file has been drawn up, and the representativeness of the sample has been evaluated as accurate, except for the loss of cases that occurred for three Belgian subregions. With the addition of the 1961 census sample, cross-sectional microdata from the five successive population censuses since that year, covering a broad range of topics, are now available to the research community. The reconstruction of the 1961 census sample was part of the activities of the HISSTAT project, which is currently being run by a consortium of research institutions in Belgium to bring together cross-sectional aggregated data since 1800, aggregated longitudinal data since 1880, and cross-sectional microdata since 1961, all covering the entire country.     

BAYESIAN SMOOTHING OF RATES IN SMALL GEOGRAPHIC AREAS*

ABSTRACT. An enormous amount of socio-economic and public-health data come as rates (e.g., unemployment, per capita income, mortality rates, census undercount) reported in small geographic areas. The U.S. Census Bureau regularly publishes data series at the county level, although the county is often a small area chosen for administrative convenience rather than by design. The reported rates can be regarded as a noisy representation of the true geographic distribution of rates over the small areas. This article presents a Bayesian statistical method of smoothing raw rates. In order to illustrate the important features of the method, a data set on undercoverage in the 1980 U.S. Census will be used.