Search

In this study a model is developed and tested to describe the selection of major grocery purchase towns by a dispersed population. The information used was from a questionnaire taken to the approximately 600 households which comprised an areally stratified random sample of the Iowa dispersed population in 1960. The model uses the concept, developed in the work, of an indifference surface of town attractiveness indices to predict consumer town selection. The test of the model leads to the conclusion that consumer spatial expenditure patterns for grocery purchases can be better predicted by this model than the alternate assumptions of central place theory, and that the search routine employed in the model is a more suitable basis for explaining these spatial patterns than the multiple regression techniques which have recently been in vogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses some recent changes in agriculture, with particular reference to the Southwest in the U.S. The federal Census and special research studies. The first supplies us with information concerning conditions existing at a given point in time. By comparing conditions at one specified time with those existing at prior or subsequent periods it is possible to gain some understanding of what may be called underlying or long-time trends. Notwithstanding its limitations the Census provides a variety of rough indexes of the changes that are taking place. These indexes may, to some extent, be interpreted in terms of their deeper social meaning. A change of major importance in the Southwest as in the rest of the Nation is the declining proportion of the population engaged directly in agriculture and the corresponding increase in the proportion in industrial occupations or a unemployed. The basis of the problem is the high birth rate of the farm population in comparison with that of non-farm areas.

The article puts forth several studies on the cost of crime in selected Counties in Arkansas. A number of different forms were tried in an endeavor to reduce to a minimum the labor of filling out. None were very successful, and it is recognized that a really fair cross section of the state could be secured only by personal investigation under favorable circumstances. In some cases, as indicated above, officials are definitely hostile. Very rarely have two reports for the same county at the same time yielded the same figure. In some cases the care and ability and energy displayed in getting data were known, and in other cases the source and its dependability were considered good. But in many cases there has been no way in which to check accuracy unless two or three reports agreed with each other, and even then there is no certainty. However, the rather even run of figures in the list that appears later seems to indicate a reasonable degree of correctness. Of the thirty counties listed only four have a city of more than 10,000 population (1930 Census) and these counties have rather high costs per capita. (Cost per capita would appear to be the fairest way to compare counties).

The article focuses on a study that discover the marital condition of the total population of Texas fifteen years of age and over as well as the conditions existing in the various classes of the population. The analysis does not attempt to consider specific age groups. An extension of the findings of this paper to include five or ten year age-division periods would prove more enlightening; for the percentage of a population who are married is dependent on the age distribution of the population. For instance, there is a smaller per cent of persons married under thirty years of age than over thirty. The margin of error in reports for the census is impossible to determine. Unbiased errors, where report was given by some one other than the person enumerated, probably offset each other. There has been an increase in the proportion of the males and of the females of each class that is married, with the single exception of the females of the foreign born white class. Correspondingly, there has been a decrease in the proportion of both sexes that is single.

Defenders of slavery in the antebellum South commonly contrasted the work life of the Southern slave with that of the Northern free Afro-Americans to the great advantage of the slave system. The abolitionists replied that the real issue was freedom to make choices which the Afro-Americans possessed in the North and was denied in the South. Neither side offered much direct evidence to substantiate an argument based on the economic position of the Northern Afro-Americans. Much recent historical inter- est in Afro-American's society, however, has generated some research into the problem of Afro-Americans employment before the civil war with the hope of throwing some light upon the treatment of free colored workers. Pennsylvania had adopted a policy of gradual emancipation in 1780. As a result, the number of slaves declined rapidly until in 1800 the census reported only one in Union Township in which the furnace was located. That slave belonged to Robert Farmar who had no share in furnace ownership and who used his slave to work on his farm. The closest township in nearby Chester County reported no slaves in that year.

This article focuses on the development of manufacturing industries in Oklahoma. In 1900 the population of Oklahoma was 790,000, including those living in the Indian Territory; it was about 1 per cent of that of the nation. From 1900 to 1930, the rate of population growth was greater in Oklahoma than in the United States as a whole, but the censuses of 1940 and 1950 recorded absolute losses in population for the twenty-year period from 1930 to 1950. Oklahoma had only 495 manufacturing firms in 1899, and these comprised but 0.2 per cent of all manufacturing firms in the United States. A different picture of the importance of manufacturing in Oklahoma is obtained if the value-added concept is used. Value added is computed by subtracting the cost of materials, supplies, containers, purchased electric energy, and contract work from the total value of shipments. Just as manufacturing was concentrated in certain regions in the United States, within Oklahoma manufacturing was concentrated in relatively few counties.

The effects of questions which differ in form and length on completeness and accuracy of information reported in household interviews were explored in o series of four field studies. Question length and structure were varied systematically while keeping constant the demand characteristics. Questions differed also in the recall time offered and the amount of redundancy contained. The analyses were based on tope-recorded interviews containing questions on health events and behaviors. The longer questions elicited more information than short ones. Indications ore that the data were also more accurate. Several hypotheses are offered to explain these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the household survey with multiplicity, sample households report information about their own residents as well as about other persons who live elsewhere, such as relatives or neighbors, as specified by a multiplicity rule adopted in the survey. Although sampling errors for the multiplicity survey are not necessarily smaller than those for the conventional survey in which sample households report for their own residents only, in most instances it should be feasible to assure a substantial reduction in sampling error by selecting appropriate multiplicity rules. Using alternative statistical models, it is demonstrated that under specified conditions, sampling errors for the multiplicity survey are necessarily smaller than those for the conventional survey, and the results give insight regarding the factors contributing to the efficiency of the multiplicity survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of a statistically adequate set of construction price indexes is the goal of a research effort recently instituted at the Bureau of the Census. This paper describes research done to date on price indexes for single-family houses and indicates plans for future research. Using data from the Bureau's Housing Sales Survey, indexes of the price of new one-family houses sold (including value of site) have been computed by determining the most important characteristics of these houses and estimating, by regression analysis, the price change in houses with a constant "mix" of these characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between the in-migration and out-migration of employed persons to and from specific metropolitan areas. Utilizing data from the 1960 Census of Population, it presents evidence that this relationship is close, that is, that areas gaining large (or small) numbers of employed persons through migration tend also to lose large (or small) numbers this way, whether the gain and loss are measured on a relative or an absolute basis. Moreover, the correlation between the two flows remains high whether one examines the data for ail employed persons in combination, or breaks the employed total down into its specific color-sex and major occupation group components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regression upon principal components of the percentage points of the income and education distributions for 1950 census tracts in the city of Chicago led to the estimation of "beta coefficient profiles" for television receiver and refrigerator ownership, for central heating system usage, and for a measure of dwelling unit overcrowding. The betas are standardized coefficients of regression of a dependent variable upon the proportions of families in the classes of the marginal income and education distributions. They measure the relative contribution of families in these classes to the over-all per cent saturation of the dependent variable in the tract. The coefficients were estimated by techniques developed in the first portion of the paper; estimation by classical regression methods would have been impossible because of multicollinearity. The empirical results are in substantial agreement with findings from regressions of the dependent variables upon the mean values of income and education, and their squares. The statistical devices appear to be useful in exploratory empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]