Breaking the boundaries: geographical approaches to integrating 200 years of the census

Summary:  The census and similar sources of data have been published for two centuries so the information that they contain should provide an unparalleled insight into the changing population of Britain over this time period. To date, however, the seemingly trivial problem of changes in boundaries has seriously hampered the use of these sources as they make it impossible to create long run time series of spatially detailed data. The paper reviews methodologies that attempt to resolve this problem by using geographical information systems and areal inter-polation to allow the reallocation of data from one set of administrative units onto another. This makes it possible to examine change over time for a standard geography and thus it becomes possible to unlock the spatial detail and the temporal depth that are held in the census and in related sources.     

Issues Involved With the Seasonal Adjustment of Economic Time Series

In the first part of this article, we briefly review the history of seasonal adjustment and statistical time series analysis in order to understand why seasonal adjustment methods have evolved into their present form. This review provides insight into some of the problems that must be addressed by seasonal adjustment procedures and points out that advances in modem time series analysis raise the question of whether seasonal adjustment should be performed at all. This in turn leads to a discussion in the second part of issues involved in seasonal adjustment. We state our opinions about the issues raised and review some of the work of other authors. First, we comment on reasons that have been given for doing seasonal adjustment and suggest a new possible justification. We then emphasize the need to define precisely the seasonal and nonseasonal components and offer our definitions. Finally, we discuss criteria for evaluating seasonal adjustments. We contend that proposed criteria based on empirical comparisons of estimated components are of little value and suggest that seasonal adjustment methods should be evaluated based on whether they are consistent with the information in the observed data. This idea is illustrated with an example.     

美国经济分析局简介

本文详细介绍了美国经济分析局的职能、机构组织和人员、经费预算以及承担的统计调查项目、数据质量要求以及当前面临的挑战，并在此基础上提出了美国经济分析局的战略规划和战略目标。     

Comments on “Canonical Correlation in Multivariate Time Series Analysis With an Application to One-Year-Ahead and Multiyear- Ahead Macroeconomic Forecasting,” by P. W. Otter

We examine the orthogonality assumption of seasonal and nonseasonal components for official quarterly unemployment figures in Germany and the United States. Although nonperiodic correlations do not seem to reject the orthogonality assumption, a periodic analysis based on correlation functions that vary with the seasons indicates the violation of orthogonality. We find that the unadjusted data can be described by periodic autoregressive models with a unit root. In simulations we replicate the empirical findings for the German data, where we use these simple models to generate artificial samples. Multiplicative seasonal adjustment leads to large periodic correlations. Additive adjustment leads to smaller ones.     

Residential mobility in an era of economic transformations and population reformations: A case study of Hong Kong

This paper compares the home-moving patterns of Hong Kong citizens in the periods of 1996–2001 and 2001–2006, highlighted by economic downturns, population reformations and subsequent housing policies adjustments during the second period. It is first shown in the findings that the supply of public housing, instead of its tenure, dictates home-moving propensities and patterns. Then, housing needs among elderly and pre-elderly people appears to be overwhelmed by social needs such as attachment and existing social networks, along with direct or indirect financial constraints. Besides, spatial lock-in appears to be more prevalent among Chinese immigrants as compared to non-Chinese immigrants, owed to the former's ties to local Hong Kong residents and subsequent eligibility for government assistance. Yet, despite the availability of jobs and schools, the recent trend of people moving out of new towns gradually turns these areas into marginalized communities clustered with poor people, alienated within and in a sense excluded from the city landscape altogether. A variety of policy implications, from public finance, allocation of social resources, to land use planning of rural areas and potential social conflicts, are discussed in response to the trend of population aging and immigrations from the Mainland.     

低生育率是中国的福音?——从第六次人口普查数据看中国人口发展现状与前景

本文利用全国第六次人口普查数据,对2000-2010年间妇女生育率进行了估算,考察与分析了中国人口发展的现状与前景。研究表明:中国妇女生育率早已降至1.5左右的极低水平,生育率过低不是中国的福音,如果任其发展,中国可持续发展的前景将不堪设想。重新审视中国面临的人口形势与人口问题,调整现行生育政策是避免中国未来出现严重人口危机的必然的战略选择。     

现代人口调查的格局与发展

在概要评述现代人口调查的三种主要形式——普查、登记制度和抽样调查的基础上,比较详细地介绍了一种人口调查的新模式——美国社区调查（ACS）的由来和特点,并指出两个值得我国借鉴的人口调查改革取向：基于社区的抽样调查和连续调查。     

A Method for Seasonally Adjusting Time Series With Variation in the Seasonal Amplitude

The official seasonally adjusted figures of the unemployment series in the Netherlands proved to be unsatisfactory in the years 1976 until 1980 because of the occurrence of a residual seasonal pattern in the adjusted series. There is indication that this failure is due to the presence of variations in the seasonal amplitude of the unemployment series. To improve this unsatisfactory state of affairs further research on methods of seasonal adjustment was undertaken at the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics. The outcome, method CPBX11, combines features of two methods that have been used officially, CENSUS X-11 and CPB-1. Since December 1980 the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics has used CPBX11 to compute seasonally adjusted labor market series. In this article we review in short the literature on seasonal adjustment and compare the performance of the three procedures referred to above in adjusting the series Unemployment in Construction and Live Births (per 1,000 of the mean population) for the Netherlands. The CPBX11 method yields more satisfactory results, especially for the first series.     

中美日基本单位（企业登记）名录库建设与发展的比较与思考

文章对中国、美国和日本基本单位（企业登记）名录库建设的历史和现状进行了比较分析,对建立和完善我国基本单位名录库的有关问题进行了深入思考,提出成立国家基本单位名录库建设领导小组等六条建议。