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This paper first reviews the descriptions and structural explanations for variations, in urban population densities in the United States over several decades. The research reviewed focuses on shifts in the technology and economics of travel as being the major influences on urban density distributions. These variables appear to be somewhat less adequate as explanations of the process in recent decades. After reviewing these findings and suggesting several research questions, we attempt to assess the evidence relating variations in population density to several other aspects of human behavior. A review of the research relating high population densities to various "social pathologies" indicates that little of the variance in rates of these pathologies can be attributed to density independently of other social structural variables. Some important consequences of population density have been reported, however, and possible research directions are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many attempts have been made to compare the fertility of rural and urban populations. Usually the rates as published by the U.S. Bureau of the Census have been presented at their face value. Occasionally corrections have been made for differences in the age and sex distributions of the respective populations before the comparisons were attempted. But these assume that registration is equally complete in rural and urban areas. This paper attempts to show that such is not the case, that registration of births is far less complete in the rural than in the urban portions of the United States. It also seeks to develop for each state the correction factors which are needed in order that valid comparisons of rural and urban fertility may be made. As a starting point, some mode of estimating the completeness of registration is necessary. Unfortunately, in the United States, all the conditions necessary for an exact estimate of the number of births are not perfectly fulfilled. But with certain modifications they can be utilized. First, in registering infant deaths, all persons aged less than one year at the time of death are taken, instead of all those born within the given calendar year.

The primary purpose of this paper is to analyze the "determinants" of migration between Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSA's) in the United States. The magnitudes in which various factors have influenced inter-SMSA migration are estimated both for the country as a whole and for individual SMSA's. The "migration elasticities" estimated for individual SMSA's are in turn used to test several additional hypo- theses concerning migrant behavior. Other similar migration studies have found "wrong" signs or insignificant coefficients on certain variables a priori thought to play a crucial role in the migration process. Finally, we present clues to the causes of such "surprising" results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of destination choices among metropolitan bound migrants in an already highly urban society is a means toward gauging trends in the urbanization process. The results of this paper indicated that destination choices were strongly influenced by SMSA size, with larger SMSAs and particularly their suburban rings attractive to migrants. This pattern suggested the further growth of the larger SMSAs, to the detriment of those smaller in size. In addition, the varied status of migrants entering the ring pointed toward its increased heterogeneity. Yet, among small SMSAs, the central city received more and higher-status migrants than the ring. Here, destination choice was also linked to similarity to the migrant's past residence. Regional differences emerged, and a closer examination of small and very large SMSAs suggested that destination choices were influenced by previous patterns of urban growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the variations in urban population structure in the U.S. cities over the period of twenty-years from 1940 to 1960. Two cities, Rochester and Seattle, serve as case studies for this analysis of variation. The study focuses on the relationships between population structures, that is, the age and sex composition of census tract populations, and other social and demographic variables. Population structure was singled out for study as it reflects the dynamic processes of urban growth and change, in terms of the natural demographic factors of births and deaths, as well as the possibly more important selective migration of population. Population structure forms the basis upon which community social organization is constituted. There exist several dimensions to the study of change in census tract populations. The correlation of deviational changes not only permits an investigation of perhaps the most crucial aspect of change, the relationship between velocities of change, but also encourages the inspection of all six intercorrelations between the basic data.

Growing concern over pesticide use and environmental quality has intensified the potential for varying attitudes between the farmer and the city dweller toward the pesticide industry. The reasons of the differences in attitudes toward the pesticide industry are influenced by the usability of pesticide in the groups' production activities. This report summarizes the results of a survey related to the statements about the pesticide industry among farmers and city dwellers in Champaign County, Illinois.

This study was concerned with the relationships between divorce rates and seven social factors for each of the 34 Nebraska counties having some urban population. The zero-order correlations between divorce rates and each of the seven factors were significant. Further investigation showed significant correlations between several of the factors and indicated the need for removing the influence of other factors. Using partial correlation to hold constant the other factors, the correlation of each factor with divorce was determined. Four of the factors—religious affiliation, age composition of population, educational level, and population mobility—were not significantly correlated. The other three—foreign composition of the population, urbanization, and income level—were significantly correlated with divorce and accounted for approximately 83 per cent of the differences in divorce rates between the 34 counties represented in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Rural Sociology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Rural Sociology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Rural Sociology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The general consensus of demographers and other observers of population phenomena has been that differential fertility among various groupings within the U.S. population has been in a process of contraction during recent decades. The evidence presented in this study, in general, supports this consensus although not without reservations. More precisely, the main findings of this study can be specified as follows. There appears to be some evidence of contraction between white and nonwhite fertility, although since 1920 the relationship has stabilized at around 85 percent of unity. The evidence on the urban rural differential is more inconclusive. Although the urban rural fertility ratios in 1930 are the closest they have ever been in this time series, this is due to the greater increases in urban fertility during the baby boom and is not prefaced by any observable trend toward contraction before 1940 except among nonwhites. The data on the educational fertility differential are inadequate.

The most prominent research investigations of leadership relations currently making scientific progress appear to be sociometric studies. But despite their contributions, sociometric studies seem to be seriously hampered, in terms of integrating diverse patterns of leadership, by an inadequate theoretical orientation. The adequacy of this orientation stems primarily from the inability of "socio-criteria" to comprise a system of related leadership categories but also from the proponents' questionable claims that: leadership is based on harmonious group support; the correct research method to determine leadership is to proceed by means of "respondent authorship" through the "reality test"; and leadership positions should be determined only by sociogram inspection which not only becomes progressively more difficult as the size and scope of the community increases, but also denies the validity of qualitative treatments. To develop an alternative research treatment which would eliminate the limitations of the sociometric approach and provide a possible basis for a more generalized theory of leadership relations, a New York rural community, comprising about 4,000 residents, was studied in 1946-1947.

In this article, the author briefly considers some of the changing imagery of American cities and suburbs. Today's urban imagery is no longer concerned with the imagined polarity of countryside and city, which for so long preoccupied Americans. This polarity was succeeded some decades ago by a presumed polarity of city and suburb, a polarity which followed in the wake of a vastly increased sub-urbanization of American cities, and the flight of great numbers of city dwellers to the suburbs in search of fresh air, safe and quiet streets, genuine communal life, better standards of domestic living, and, as American sociologists have so often stressed, more prestigious locales in which to live. But the imagined polarity of suburb and city is already breaking down, and new imagery is beginning to take its place. Americans are now being told in their mass media that soon they will be living in fifteen great, sprawling, nameless communities, which are rapidly changing the human geography of the entire country. They are beginning to have spread before them maps of these vast urban conglomerations, which are not cities but are nevertheless thoroughly urban: super-cities and strip cities. They are being warned that the United States' urban regions are already entering upon a new stage of development, even before most people are aware that urban regions exist at all.

In this article it is argued that in studies of urban fertility, the relationship between socio-economic variables and fertility has been obscured by the presence of rural migrants in the populations under investigation. Accordingly, data obtained from families of completed fertility in six probability samples of metropolitan Detroit, Michigan are divided into two groups, farm migrants and two-generation urbanites. In general, the socio-economic differences in fertility observed among the pure urban types in Detroit are found to be small and inconsistent, most of them being statistically insignificant. The inverse fertility pattern found in the total Detroit population is attributed to: (a) the overrepresentation of farm migrants, who have high fertility, in the lowest social and economic positions in the city, and (b) the pronounced inverse pattern of fertility among the farm migrants. It is suggested that the absence of an inverse fertility pattern among two-generation urbanites and its presence among the farm migrants can be attributed to differences in family organization.

Using the data collected from two studies in France and America about the relationships between marital interaction and real number of children, the authors found that in both countries better marital salts faction and agreement are related to the success of the realization of the desired number of children and not to the actual number of children. Furthermore, excessive fertility in France and in America is more damaging to conjugal interaction than negative fertility. In both countries the wife's satisfaction with the standard of living is the single aspect of marital interaction which is related to the real number of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blacks are more likely than whites to have unwanted births. A common explanation for that difference is that blacks use less effective contraceptive methods, use contraception less effectively, and use contraception less often than whites. Analysis of data from 17 cities in our family planning evaluation project suggested that, among women living in low-income neighborhoods, the black-white difference in unwanted births was not due to (1) blacks reaching desired completed parity at younger ages than whites, (2) differences in age or parity in our black and white samples, (3) black-white differences in current use of physician-administered contraception, or (4) blacks being more likely than whites to adopt physician-administered contraception after having an unwanted birth. Black-white differences which might have contributed to relatively more unwanted births among blacks were (1) blacks desired fewer children, (2) blacks were less likely than whites to use nonphysician-administered methods and more likely than whites to use no contraception, and (3) blacks had higher failure rates than whites subsequent to the adoption of physician-administered methods and when not using those methods. Comparisons are made with the 1965 and 1970 National Fertility Studies, and program implications of the findings discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Census data for area! units, SMSA's in 1960 and cities in 1940, are used to test hypotheses and estimate parameters concerning the influence of a variety of socioeconomic variables on fertility rates of ever married white and nonwhite women aged 25-29, 30-34, 35-44, and 45-49. An economic mode! of the demand for children is adopted as the theoretical framework. The principal findings are that the market earnings opportunities for wives have an important negative effect on the fertility rate and that male income, representing the income of husbands, has a small but positive effect on fertility. The implication of these results is that changes in economic variables, for example, improvements in the employment opportunities and wages for wives or the establishment of a children's allowance program, may be expected to affect fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt is made to investigate the educational differentials between various types of interdivisional migrants and nonmigrants in selected Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSA's) of the United States. The analysis is carried out for four color-sex groups standardized for age. We have been able to identify three distinct patterns of migration differentials by education, that is, the J-shaped, the U-shaped, and the reverse J-shaped distributions. The tendency for migrants to be better educated than nonmigrants, by and large, has received support from the data we have analyzed. Wherever this tendency has not been confirmed, the main factors which, we believe, have influenced the differentials are the proportion of foreign-born whites, the geographic location of the places of origin and destination, and the differences in levels of educational attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has demonstrated that socioeconomic differentials in fertility are heavily influenced by couples with rural background. These studies show an inverse relationship between fertility and socioeconomic status for couples of rural background, but no relationship for urban- origin couples. The effect of urban background on rural fertility differentials has not been examined. This study investigates the potential effect of urban-origin couples on socioeconomic differences in fertility in rural areas. Data from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity are analyzed to show that rural socioeconomic fertility differences are not influenced by the presence of persons of urban background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]