Toward a new conceptualization of settlements for demography

摘要

Space is IMPORTANT in demography. It has long been recognized that where people live and work can be a relevant factor in helping to explain their demographic behavior. However, unlike many of the other independent variables we employ--socioeconomicstatus, class, role and status of women, economic well-being, labor force participation--our efforts at categorizing location in censuses and surveys remain crude. The typologies used to differentiate settlements for demographic analysis are commonly based on the urban-rural dichotomies officially recognized by individual countries. These measures of urban and rural locations were generally developed 40 to 50 years ago and have undergone only minor modification since then, especially in the conceptualsense. Moreover, even when first proposed they were strongly criticized as being overly simplistic (UN 1952, 1967). Nevertheless, a critical approach to the use of simple urban-rural dichotomies in censuses and surveys and to the criteria adopted to distinguish between them seems to have faded, so that the classification systems are now largely accepted without question. It is ironic that this has remained true at a time when developments in settlement systems have made these classifications less meaningful and changes in the needs of analysts have rendered them less relevant for studying patterns of demographic development.