Demography as a Spatial Social Science

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.     

Children of the closet: a measurement of the anxiety and self-esteem of children raised by a non-disclosed homosexual or bisexual parent

This research examined whether a parent's non-disclosure of his or her homosexual or bisexual orientation within the family unit negatively affects self-esteem and anxiety in children, as measured in adulthood. Thirty-six subjects indicated that they had not known of their parent's sexual orientation until an average age of sixteen for the children of lesbian or bisexual mothers, and twenty-two for the children of gay or bisexual fathers. This group's scores on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Marlowe Crowne Social Desirabilty Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Scale were compared to scores obtained by sixty-three participants who did not have a homosexual/bisexual parent. The number of years a secretive environment surrounded the child was measured, as were participants' attitudes about the secret sexual identity. Although the study did not find that adults previously raised with a closeted parent had significantly higher levels of anxiety or lower levels of self-esteem, results indicated that those who had been raised as children with non-disclosed lesbian mothers showed a significantly higher level of self-esteem than participants with heterosexual parents. Implications of the findings for the targeted population are discussed.     

The impact of class,education, and health care on infant mortality in a developing society: The case of rural Thailand

Demographic and social factors affecting infant mortality in rural northern Thailand are examined using log-linear modifiedmultiple regression models and data drawn from a representative sample of married couples in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces. Demographic factors do not account for the effects of variations in parental ability or willingness to provide adequate infant care. The final model estimated incorporated both these social dimensions of child care. Parental ability, measured by father’s social class, mother’s health information, and local community development levels, continued to have significant independent effects upon infant survival. Parental willingness, measured by parent’s beliefs about intergenerational wealth transfers, no longer had a significant effect net of other social variables, but infant survival was still affected by whether both parents wanted a birth.     

Mobility plans and mobility behavior: Convergences and divergences in Thailand

Using Thai data, this paper develops and tests a model of rural-urban mobility behavior in a context dominated by high levels of circular rural-urban mobility. With mobility plans and mobility behavior measured in analogous ways, a close correspondence between mobility plans and mobility behavior is found. In spite of this close correspondence, however, multivariate analysis shows that past mobility behavior—rather than mobility plans—is the most important predictor of subsequent mobility. Where experience with a given type of behavior is abundant, prior behavior may often be the best predictor of subsequent behavior, but where experience with a given type of behavior is scarce, behavioral intentions may be a more relevant explanatory variable.The research reported here was funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations' Research Program on Population and Development Policy (RF 77065; Allocation 164). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the section on migration strategies, migration intentions, and migration decisions at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 3–5, 1984.     

Sons,Daughters or Both?: An Analysis of Family Sex Composition Preferences in the Philippines

An analysis of family sex composition preferences as well as the relationship between actual family sex composition and desire for no additional children among a national sample of Filipino women is presented. An emphasis on balance or son-daughter equivalence is strongest in Metropolitan Manila. Son preference is highest in rural Mindanao and Sulu, primarily due to the concentration of Muslims in this section of the country and secondarily to its pioneer environment and the presumed utility of sons in such a milieu. The importance of eliciting sex composition preferences from both husbands and wives as well as distinguishing the “striking for a balance” from sex-linked preferences in future research is discussed.     

Environmental Protection,Population Change,and Economic Development in the Rural Western United States

This research analyzes the relationship between protected federal lands (wilderness, national parks, national monuments and roadless areas) and nearby communities in the rural western United States. Opponents of environmental protection claim that protected lands limit the growth of nearby communities by locking up potentially valuable natural resources and restricting mining, logging and grazing. Others claim that extractive industries are no longer the backbone of rural economies— instead, the presence of protected federal lands encourages growth by attracting tourists and new residents. A geographic information system is used to calculate the proportion of protected lands occurring within 50 miles of the center of each western county. This calculation, in combination with detailed county-level data, indicates that environmental protection is correlated with relatively rapid population growth and with relatively rapid income and employment growth.     

Urban poverty and health in developing countries: Household and neighborhood Effects

In the United States and other high-income countries, there is intense scholarly and programmatic interest in the effects of household and neighborhood living standards on health. Yet few studies of developing-country cities have explored these issues. We investigated whether the health of urban women and children in poor countries is influenced by both household and neighborhood standards of living. Using data from the urban samples of 85 Demographic and Health Surveys and modeling living standards using factor-analytic MIMIC methods, we found that the neighborhoods of relatively poor households are more heterogeneous than is often asserted. Our results indicated that poor urban households do not tend to live in uniformly poor neighborhoods: about 1 in 10 of a poor household’s neighbors is relatively affluent, belonging to the upper quartile of the urban distribution of living standards. Do household and neighborhood living standards influence health? Using multivariate models, we found that household living standards are closely associated with three health measures: unmet need for modern contraception, attendance of a trained health care provider at childbirth, and young children’s height for age. Neighborhood living standards exert a significant additional influence in many of the surveys we examined, especially for birth attendance.     

Unravelling Subjective Quality of Life: An Investigation of Individual and Community Determinants

Subjective quality of life is a popular measureof outcomes across fields as disparate asmedical research, community and healthpsychology and sociology. Its widespread usehas led to recent calls for a betterunderstanding of the psychological determinantsof the construct, emphasising the need to builda substantial body of knowledge around whatdetermines and impacts on perceptions of lifequality if it is to live up to currentexpectations as an outcome variable. This studyused two likely determinants of quality oflife, an individual level variable, loneliness,and a community level variable, aspects ofsense of community, and investigated theirassociation with subjective quality of life.Confidence in the results of the study wasstrengthened by repeating it in two separatetowns, matched on fundamental demographicvariables. The results revealed that subjectivequality of life was consistently associatedwith the individual level variable, loneliness,in both towns. Lonely people consistentlyreported significantly lower quality of life,particularly in the domains of intimacy,community involvement and emotional well-being.Once loneliness had been accounted for, thecommunity level variables showed much weaker,and generally no association with reportedquality of life. The importance of continuingto empirically identify variables that impactupon subjective quality of life is discussed.     

An alternative sampling strategy for obtaining child health data in a reproductive health survey

Retrospective demographic surveys typically collect substantial information about child health. This information is often collected for all children born during a specified period. For women with several young children, the interview can become quite long. To shorten the interview, some surveys have asked child health questions only for the last child born. However, data on the last birth may be biased because last children have a younger age distribution and have longer subsequent birth intervals than does the average child. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach to collecting child health data - that child health questions be asked only for a child chosen randomly from among the respondent's children younger than age five. This alternative has the advantage of keeping the interview shorter but does not lead to biased information.Abbreviations DHS Demographic and Health Surveys