| Abstract: | The forecasting of future trends of population, as a key component of spatial systems, has been assuming increasing significance in Soviet planning. The predictive models now being used do not take adequate account of ethnic processes such as changes in ethnic self-identification. Such changes are usually associated with the offspring of mixed marriages, which in turn are a function of the frequency of ethnic contacts. A model is proposed for measuring the theoretical probability of an ethnic group entering into interethnic contacts as a function of its share in the total population of a region. The theoretical curve is tested against the actual share of births in ethnically mixed marriages. The frequency of mixed marriages is also related to a mosaic index of ethnic composition of a region. |
