Abstract
Scholars in many social science disciplines have taken note of the re-emerging interest in issues concerning social processes embedded within a spatial context. While some argue that this awakening is refreshing and new and, in fact, long overdue, I demonstrate that spatially focused demographic theories and research agendas clearly predate contemporary interest in these topics. I assert that recent methodological advancements have merely encouraged and brought refinement to the expanding body of spatially oriented population research—research strongly rooted in demographic tradition and practice. Indeed, I make the claim that, until roughly the mid-20th century, virtually all demography in the United States (and elsewhere, but not specifically examined here) was spatial demography. Then, shortly after mid-century, a paradigm shift occurred, and the scientific study of population quickly came to be dominated by attention to the individual as the agent of demographic action. Traditional spatial demography—macro-demography—gave way to micro-demography, and, I argue, most demographers simply abandoned the data and approach of spatial demography. In closing the paper I include a brief discussion of the recent awakening that has come to spatial demographers from developments in other disciplines, principally geography, regional science, and spatial econometrics.
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Notes
I focus my attention on demography as practiced in the United States, although I assert that the general argument holds as well for demography as practiced outside the U.S.
Migration is an area of research often located within the broader field of spatial data analysis dealing specifically with “spatial interaction data.” This particular approach to the study of migration has received considerable attention, and has been the subject of much published research, mostly by British quantitative geographers. This substantial literature seems not to be widely familiar to U.S. demographers working in the area (Yano et al. 2003; Bailey and Gatrell 1995, pp. 337–387; Fotheringham 1983, 1991; Fotheringham and O’Kelley 1989).
There are gray areas. While reviewing my paper, Marcia Castro asked about studies of individual behavior that include some aspects of space, for example, distance or small scale contextual effects, while remaining essentially a micro-level analysis. The question is a good one, and I am inclined to include such studies in my inventory of spatial demography. A good example of such research would be that of Entwisle et al. (1997), whose work clearly has been embraced by others as modern spatial demography.
My choice of words here may be confusing to some readers, as the term “micro-demography” has earlier been used by Bogue to mean, “the study of…local area” (Bogue 1957, p. 46). Bogue’s definition would apply to my use of the terms areal demography, macro-level demography, or, my preferred term, spatial demography. In this paper my use of the term “micro-demography” follows more recent convention by referring to the statistical analysis of individual-level (or perhaps family- or household-level) records from a micro-data file, such as a census public use micro-data sample (PUMS) file.
For example, I do not allow as exception to my thesis the work of early population forecasters (e.g., Pearle and Reed 1920; Pritchett 1891; Bonynge 1852) who used various univariate time-wise models to “fit” a set of census counts and then to extrapolate population change into the future. Dorn (1950) provides a helpful review and critique of these early forecasting efforts. While this work predates much of what today is considered the modern science of demography, I simply note in passing that, by definition, these efforts involved reference to populations attached to geographic space.
The spatial nature of early demography is no better illustrated than by highlighting the parallel development in Europe of the field of cartography and the thematic mapping of “moral statistics” (characteristics of populations including education, crime, pauperism, etc.). The development of mapping and its early links to population statistics is beautifully told in Robinson’s (1982) comprehensive history of cartography. I am indebted to Stephen Matthews for helping me better understand this link.
I extend my appreciation to Frank M. Howell for drawing my attention to the Chicago School’s debt to the earlier community-level work of Charles Galpin (Howell 2004).
An interesting parallel argument regarding the general discipline of sociology has been made by Massey (2001).
Many major U.S. national surveys of importance and interest to demographers cannot be mentioned here due to space limitations. Moreover, if our lens were widened in scope to examine important international demographic and health surveys, the list would surely number in the several hundreds. In this latter regard, a helpful website is http://www.measuredhs.com/aboutdhs/history.cfm.
The first such file, based on the 1960 Census, was created by the Census Bureau and released in 1963. A larger and more geographically detailed Public Use Micro-Data sample, based on the 1970 census was released in the early 1970s, and, shortly thereafter in 1973, the Census Bureau released an expanded public use micro-data sample file from the 1960 census (with larger samples, more geographic detail, and more complete coverage of the subject content than the earlier release). Since these early releases, the Census Bureau has worked in conjunction with various sociologists and demographers to create PUMS files from most of the U.S. decennial censuses. Today, files spanning most decades between 1850 and 2000, in addition to international PUMS data files, are available in machine-readable format free of charge through the IPUMS Project at the Minnesota Population Center at http://www.ipums.org.
British geographer John Coward was quite direct about the matter: “Utilizing individual data from surveys and registers widens the scope for explanation and reduces the likelihood of falling into the ecological fallacy” (1986, p. 45). I add two additional thoughts here. One is to simply acknowledge that the expression “ecological fallacy” was not used by Robinson himself but appeared only later. The second is to emphasize a point suggested by reviewer Glenn Fuguitt. In this article I deal with issues of both ecological fallacy and spatial demography. I do not wish for the reader to assume that, somehow, appropriate spatial models (discussed near the end of my article as spatial econometrics) can overcome matters of aggregation bias or ecological fallacy. They cannot.
A 1934 issue of the Journal of the American Statistical Association contained several notable articles in which cautions were raised regarding the analysis of spatial data. In addition to the Gehlke and Biehl (1934) article cited above, two brief articles in this remarkable issue caution against the application of statistical measures that assume independence of observations to spatial aggregates such as census tracts or counties (Neprash 1934; Stephan 1934). A third article (Stouffer 1934) echoes the Gehlke and Beale warning: “Nothing has been said [in the present article] as to the variety of results obtained depending on the size of the area when the study has a geographical base” (1934, p. 58, emphasis mine).
Marcia Castro, after reviewing a draft of this paper, suggested an additional category of contemporary demographic research for this section: formal demography. I accept this addition but do not comment upon it at length. Demographers such as William Brass, Ansley Coale, Paul Demeny, and their many colleagues and collaborators have contributed substantially in recent decades to a formal form of spatial demography through the estimation of demographic rates from limited and defective data, derivation of model life tables and fertility schedules, and the innovative development of other formal elements of demographic interest. A few citations illustrate this body of work: Brass (1975), Brass and Macrae (1984), Coale et al. (1983), and Coale and Trussell (1978). A good summary of this and other such work can be found in Preston et al. (2001).
For a recent interesting and encompassing review of the early history of migration research, the reader is directed to Greenwood and Hunt (2003).
For citations to work that has produced intercensal net migration numbers and rates for all U.S. counties since 1950 see Johnson et al. (2005).
A possible exception to this statement is the data from the decennial census based on the question asking about previous residence. I say “possible exception” because even though this information is asked of individual census respondents and is available for analysis at that level using the census PUMS files, most uses of these data relate to summaries at some aggregated level. The Census Bureau asked such a question with a five-year reference period in the censuses of 1940 and 1960–2000. The 1950 Census included a previous residence question with a one-year reference period. These data provide detailed migration stream information down to the county level, but again these migration streams relate migration between two counties—aggregated spatial units.
One example of such collaboration is the emergence of demographers working in the area that has become known as “environmental demography” (see, for example, Lutz 2002; O’Neil et al. 2001; Lutz et al. 2000; Dietz and Rosa 1994; Schnaiberg and Gould 1994; Schnaiberg 1980). Florax and Van der Vlist (2003), among others, have drawn particular attention to the way in which recent increases and availability of spatially referenced data have partly driven the research agendas of several disciplines and have fostered new interdisciplinary collaborations.
This obviously is an oversimplification. Both the demographic discipline (as a course of study) and the demographic profession (which defines the areas of pursuit and practice of various population scientists) are mature and multifaceted. That said, I maintain that the division described here applies readily to most demographic research and practice today, regardless of the specific substantive foci of the efforts, which are many.
I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Katherine Curtis White in preparing this section of the paper.
I find fascination in the fact that a recent article by Messner and Anselin (2004) makes precisely the same claim for empirical studies seeking to explain spatial heterogeneity of homicide rates. The authors assert that early interest in areal analyses shifted to studies that were “largely insensitive to spatial context.” They go on to say, “The field has changed dramatically in recent years, and criminologists are increasingly applying formal tools of spatial analysis to describe and explain variations in levels of homicide (and other crimes)” (2004, p. 127).
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Hatch Grant WIS04536, by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, Center Grants HD05876 and Training Grant HD07014, and by the Wisconsin Center for Demography and Ecology, through its Geographic Information and Analysis Core. Portions of this paper are taken from a larger treatment of the subject, entitled “The (Re-)Emergence of Spatial Demography,” CDE Working Paper 2004-04. The author is grateful for comments on an early draft of the paper by David L. Brown, Marcia Castro, Glenn Deane, Glenn V. Fuguitt, Jennifer Huck, William A. Kandel, Halliman Winsborough, and (with a special note of appreciation) to Stephen A. Matthews and Katherine Curtis White.
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Voss, P.R. Demography as a Spatial Social Science. Popul Res Policy Rev 26, 457–476 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-007-9047-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-007-9047-4