Vol. 23, No. 3/4, Fall/Winter 1985 - "Pennsylvania's Population"
AGE STRUCTURE AND TRENDS: PENNSYLVANIA IN THE SEVENTIES
(pp. 1 – 10)
George A. Schnell
The College of New Paltz
State University of New York
New Paltz, New York
Abstract
Age, touted by demographers and others who study the human population as a most important characteristic,' changes because of trends in population size and the associated components of population change--fertility, mortality and migration. In turn, age trends produce changes in vital events and migration which, ultimately, produce growth or decline in number of inhabitants. Thus, age occupies a significant place among the myriad characteristics of population because birth, death and migration are age-selective and age operates as both cause and effect in the application of these components to population change.
RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE: THE BLACK GHETTO OF PITTSBURGH REVISITED
(pp. 11 – 20)
Joe T. Darden
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan
Abstract
I wrote in the early seventies that the quality of life in the Hill District, Pittsburgh's oldest black ghetto, improved with distance from the Central Business District (Figure 1).1 This conclusion based on 1970 census data, was consistent with ecological theory and the findings on other industrial cities.2 As racial and ethnic groups improve their social status, they are expected to move out spatially toward the periphery. As long as this process of social and spatial mobility continues, one would expect to find groups with higher income, education and occupational status living farther out from the center of the city.
(pp. 21 – 29)
Chester E. Zimolzak
Glassboro State College
Glassboro, New Jersey
Abstract
Changing population distributions and settlement patterns first evident in the 1980 census have forced geographers to re-examine standard generalizations and spatial trends once universally accepted. Long held, quite useful geographic concepts are now open to question; new interpretations of population distribution and migrational trends are sorely needed. Cities are not dead, but their future size, form and function will be different. Suburbs, too, have taken on a new form. No longer dominantly residential, low rise extensions of older central cities, many have developed (or developed around) major retail, industrial and office components. Rural areas, long declining, have exhibited renewed growth in many parts of the Northeastern United States.