Disaggregating Census Data for Population Mapping Using Random Forests with Remotely-Sensed and Ancillary Data

High resolution, contemporary data on human population distributions are vital for measuring impacts of population growth, monitoring human-environment interactions and for planning and policy development. Many methods are used to disaggregate census data and predict population densities for finer scale, gridded population data sets. We present a new semi-automated dasymetric modeling approach that incorporates detailed census and ancillary data in a flexible, “Random Forest” estimation technique. We outline the combination of widely available, remotely-sensed and geospatial data that contribute to the modeled dasymetric weights and then use the Random Forest model to generate a gridded prediction of population density at ~100 m spatial resolution. This prediction layer is then used as the weighting surface to perform dasymetric redistribution of the census counts at a country level. As a case study we compare the new algorithm and its products for three countries (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Kenya) with other common gridded population data production methodologies. We discuss the advantages of the new method and increases over the accuracy and flexibility of those previous approaches. Finally, we outline how this algorithm will be extended to provide freely-available gridded population data sets for Africa, Asia and Latin America.     

Core values and cultural identity

This article examines racial classifications on United States population census schedules between 1890 and 1990 to provide insights on the changing meanings of race in US society. The analysis uses a sociology of knowledge perspective which assumes that race is an ideological concept that can be interpreted most productively by relating its definition and measurement to the larger social and political context. Four themes are identified and discussed: (i) the historical and continuing importance of skin colour, usually dichotomized into white and non‐white, in defining race and counting racial groups; (ii) a belief in ‘pure’ races that is reflected in a preoccupation with categorizing people into a single or ‘pure’ race; (iii) the role of census categories in creating pan‐ethnic racial groups; and, (iv) the confusing of race and ethnicity in census racial classifications. Each theme demonstrates the potential or actual role of official statistics, exemplified by census racial data, in reflecting and guiding changes to the meaning and social perceptions of race. A detailed examination of racial classifications from the 1980 and 1990 Censuses shows that the influence of political interests on racial statistics is particularly important. The article concludes with a discussion of whether official statistical recorders such as population censuses should categorize and measure race, given the political motivations and non‐scientific character of the classifications used.     

From connection to contagion

This essay proposes that we ‘think data’ with a complex legacy of work, once disavowed and now resurgent in social theory, on crowd formations. I propose this move because social media platforms’ mobilization of data – the extractions, ever-shifting reaggregations, and micro-targeting, on the one hand, and our engagements, re-tweets, acts of sharing, and production of virality, on the other – has fuelled such anxious concern about the very things that animated much crowd theory in the first place. Key among these concerns are the force of emotional contagion and the threat of social dissolution; the composition of ‘the social’ by elements that well exceed the human; and pressing questions about the media through which energetic forces travel, often with lightning speed. What questions might be enabled by attending to the resonance between crowd theory's ‘anti-liberal’ preoccupations and contemporary concerns over how social media platforms crowd us?     

The failure of the importation of ethno-racial statistics in Europe: debates and controversies

The 2010 census round has shown a significant growth in the number of countries collecting ethnic and racial data as a consequence of the increasing consciousness of their internal ethnic diversity and to implement more active equality policies addressing ethno-racial discrimination. However, Europe is not part of this dynamic: almost nothing has changed on the ethnic statistics’ frontline in between the two census rounds. This article addresses some of the justification for the enduring resistance of “statistical blindness” to ethno-racial diversity in Europe, locating it mainly in the strategy to erase race from the public sphere as a leverage to combat racism. The limits of this strategy in the context of mass migration from former colonial empires where racial subordination and classification have been produced and developed are discussed. Europe should ultimately face its past domination (rebranded but still active today) without silencing its consequences.     

The collection of race-based data in the USA: a call for radical change

Two important new books by Greg Carter and Kenneth Prewitt provide detailed historical perspectives on how understandings of race and race categories have evolved since the founding of the republic. Prewitt focuses on an analysis of racial classification in the US census – the so-called ‘statistical races’ –and its changing role in US policy, culminating in recommendations for radical change. Carter takes as his theme population mixing across the races, offering a positive, even celebratory, but little known account of the moments and movements that have praised mixing. As pressures mount on the ‘statistical races’ in the late twentieth century, Prewitt uses the political space opened up by these debates to offer fundamental changes to US methods of ethno-racial data collection, including the removal of these questions from the census. The jury is in recess for further deliberations.     

Gendered segmented assimilation: earnings trajectories of African immigrant women and men

Racial stratification in immigrant earnings has been widely influential in theories of immigrant socioeconomic assimilation, but discussions of how racial stratification might differ by gender are underdeveloped. Segmented assimilation theory attempts to explain the underlying mechanisms that cause racial disparities, but it fails to incorporate gendered dynamics like occupational sex segregation and the feminization of particular labour flows. In this paper, we address that gap. Using data from the 1990 decennial census and the American Community Survey in 2009–11, we compare the earnings of black and white African migrants to US-born blacks and whites separately by gender. Our findings indicate that black African migrant women experience no racial disadvantage in their earnings, but black African migrant men do. Our results highlight the importance of examining racial differences in immigrant earnings interacting with gender.     

Racism,racial prejudice and Jews in late imperial Russia

The controversy over how to define racism dominates contemporary scholarship. Two opposing views emerge: either racism is a relatively new phenomenon, based on pseudo‐scientific teaching about biological inequality inherent in the various races, or racial prejudice emerged long before modern racism. According to which view they uphold, historians interpret the same historical events in different ways. The controversy is especially pronounced in the discussion of anti‐Semitism in late Imperial Russia. While historians initially pointed out the religious, economic, and political roots of persecutions aimed at Jews, during the last three decades there has been a movement towards viewing Russian discrimination against the Jews as being at least partially motivated by racial prejudice. As proof of the existence of racist attitudes towards Jews, recent scholars point to restrictions enacted in 1912 that were directed at Jewish converts to Christianity and their immediate descendants. The author argues that, rather than racial prejudice, concern over state security and economic and social competition gave rise to the legislation against converts. Racism, however, did emerge in Russia; its adherents’ main demand was to stop Russians from mixing with non‐Russians, especially Jews. Yet these ideas were restricted to narrow circles of nationalist intellectuals. Racism had too little appeal for Russians, largely because of its extreme Germanocentrism and also because Russians were only too aware of their mixed racial origins to begin with. Russification of the multi‐ethnic population of the Empire, including Jews, remained the official policy favoured by most Russian nationalists.     

Colloquium on the role and behavior of sex chromosomes in mammalian development and reproduction: Basel,May 6–8, 1965

Abstract

There are significant mortality disparities across racial and socioeconomic (SES) groups. Although the mechanisms behind these disparities remain vague, there is a clear connection between the mortality disparities across racial and SES groups. It is less clear, though, if the relationship between SES and racial mortality disparities varies across the life course. Prior research indicates that both racial and SES mortality disparities decline over the life course. These results suggest that if we standardize mortality rates for age‐variation in the SES‐mortality relationship, then the age‐pattern of racial mortality disparities will be attenuated. Using data from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study, I analyze the relationship between SES and racial disparities in age‐specific mortality among adults aged 25 and over. The results suggest that racial differences in SES are most important early in the adult life, and are minimally related to the convergence in racial mortality disparities at the oldest ages.     

The racial formation of medieval Jews: a challenge to the field

Social science discourse on race and racism has limited itself through processes of periodization and temporal constructions of racial differences, and recent scholars continue to posit race and racism as effects of modernity rather than investigating its development prior to modernity. This article looks to present a challenge to contemporary understandings of the phenomena of race and racism through a historical investigation of Jews' relationship to medieval Christendom. Through the framework of racial formation (Omi and Winant [1986] 1994) I look to show how race as a marker of both corporeal difference and socio-political consequence was formulated over time through a rearticulation of Church doctrine which first positioned the inferiority of the Jew within their religious practices, to one which located their inferiority as inherently part of their soul and manifest upon their bodies – from fixable through conversion to incurable and diseased.     

Pariah capitalism and the overseas Chinese of Southeast Asia: Problems in the definition of the problem

This paper explores how current shifts in racial discourse and demographics are reflected within the negotiation of paid domestic work. Various scholars have pointed out that racism in the United States has become increasingly covert and institutionalized, void of racial terminology and invisible to most whites. This shift has been institutionalized in the negotiation of domestic work, as alternative racial markers such as language and citizenship replace explicit racial terminology. Through an analysis of thirty interviews with white women who employ domestic workers this research examines contemporary negotiations of racial privilege and subordination in domestic work. Overall, white employers insisted that race did not matter when making hiring decisions; however other cultural markers such as language mattered greatly, at times even resulting in firing. In addition, complex and contradictory narratives about immigration were used to simultaneously both vilify immigrant workers and romanticize their work experiences.     

Are We Filling the Data Void? An Assessment of the Amount and Extent of Plant Collection Records and Census Data Available for Tropical South America

Large-scale studies are needed to increase our understanding of how large-scale conservation threats, such as climate change and deforestation, are impacting diverse tropical ecosystems. These types of studies rely fundamentally on access to extensive and representative datasets (i.e., “big data”). In this study, I asses the availability of plant species occurrence records through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the distribution of networked vegetation census plots in tropical South America. I analyze how the amount of available data has changed through time and the consequent changes in taxonomic, spatial, habitat, and climatic representativeness. I show that there are large and growing amounts of data available for tropical South America. Specifically, there are almost 2,000,000 unique geo-referenced collection records representing more than 50,000 species of plants in tropical South America and over 1,500 census plots. However, there is still a gaping “data void” such that many species and many habitats remain so poorly represented in either of the databases as to be functionally invisible for most studies. It is important that we support efforts to increase the availability of data, and the representativeness of these data, so that we can better predict and mitigate the impacts of anthropogenic disturbances.     

Generational change and how we conceptualize and measure multiracial people and “mixture”

Until relatively recently, in countries such as the U.S.A. and U.K., individuals could only opt for “single race” categories with which they identified. However, in the 2000 decennial census, respondents in the U.S. were able to choose more than one racial category, while in 2001, a “Mixed” box (with further subcategories) was provided in the England and Wales census for the first time. But the very success of this racial project in these countries has spawned a number of questions for policy-makers and academics who theorize, enumerate and study the experiences of multiracial people. With demographic changes such as generational change, who counts as multiracial or mixed race? This question has yet to receive significant attention. Although mixing is becoming more commonplace, the question of who counts as multiracial is far from straightforward, especially as we look down the generational pipeline.     

Genetic effective size of a wild primate population: influence of current and historical demography

A comprehensive assessment of the determinants of effective population size (N(e)) requires estimates of variance in lifetime reproductive success and past changes in census numbers. For natural populations, such information can be best obtained by combining longitudinal data on individual life histories and genetic marker-based inferences of demographic history. Independent estimates of the variance effective size (N(ev), obtained from life-history data) and the inbreeding effective size (N((eI), obtained from genetic data) provide a means of disentangling the effects of current and historical demography. The purpose of this study was to assess the demographic determinants of N(e) in one of the most intensively studied natural populations of a vertebrate species: the population of savannah baboons (Papio cynocephalus) in the Amboseli Basin, southern Kenya. We tested the hypotheses that N(eV) < N < N(eI) (where N = population census number) due to a recent demographic bottleneck. N(eV) was estimated using a stochastic demographic model based on detailed life-history data spanning a 28-year period. Using empirical estimates of age-specific rates of survival and fertility for both sexes, individual-based simulations were used to estimate the variance in lifetime reproductive success. The resultant values translated into an N(eV)/N estimate of 0.329 (SD = 0.116, 95% CI = 0.172-0.537). Historical N(eI), was estimated from 14-locus microsatellite genotypes using a coalescent-based simulation model. Estimates of N(eI) were 2.2 to 7.2 times higher than the contemporary census number of the Amboseli baboon population. In addition to the effects of immigration, the disparity between historical N(eI) and contemporary N is likely attributable to the time lag between the recent drop in census numbers and the rate of increase in the average probability of allelic identity-by-descent. Thus, observed levels of genetic diversity may primarily reflect the population's prebottleneck history rather than its current demography.     

Spectres of Jordan

Abstract

Despite retiring from the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 2003, the iconic basketball player Michael Jordan continues to inform popular understandings of race and racial difference. Jordan could thus be considered a raced spectre (Derrida 1994): a fantastically racialized figure derived from, and cast in the mould of, the contingencies of an earlier moment in American history, who nonetheless informs the racial politics and experience of the present. In examining Jordan's enduring influence on contemporary America's implicitly raced neoliberal formation, this discussion involves: a re-envisioning of the raced neoliberal politics implicit within, and mobilized by, Jordan's commodified identity; an illustration of how the institutionalization of racial logics derived from Jordan's idealized raced subjectivity have come to inform the racially regressive management and governance of the NBA; an exhumation of how the very form of Jordan's enduring phantasm has been accommodated to shifting, and increasingly interwoven, commercial and racial forces; and an examination of the contemporaneous manifestations and influences of the Jordan spectre.     

Rapid changes in bird community composition at multiple temporal and spatial scales in response to recent climate change

Although climate change is acknowledged to affect population dynamics and species distribution, details of how community composition is affected are still lacking. We investigate whether ongoing changes in bird community composition can be explained by contemporary changes in summer temperatures, using four independent long‐term bird census schemes from Sweden (up to 57 yr); two at the national scale and two at local scales. The change in bird community composition was represented by a community temperature index (CTI) that reflects the balance in abundance between low‐ and high‐temperature dwelling species. In all schemes, CTI tracked patterns of temperature increase, stability or decrease remarkably well, with a lag period of 1–3 yr. This response was similar at both the national and local scale. However, the communities did not respond fast enough to cope with temperature increase, suggesting that community composition lags behind changes in temperature. The change in CTI was caused mainly by changes in species’ relative abundances, and less so by changes in species composition. We conclude that ongoing changes in bird community structure are driven to a large extent by contemporary changes in climate and that CTI can be used as a simple indicator for how bird communities respond.     

Waiting list statistics. III. Comparison of two measures of waiting times.

The length of time that patients spend on waiting lists is a topic of current concern. Calculating the proportion of patients who have been on a waiting list for a long time by taking a census of patients on the list at a single point in time will tend to yield a higher estimate than that obtained by calculating waiting times of patients admitted to hospital during a period of time. To illustrate this point the waiting times of patients in the Oxford region as measured by SBH 203 returns ("census" data) were compared with those as measured by the Hospital Activity Analysis ("event" data). As expected, the SBH 203 census returns showed a higher proportion of patients who had waited over a year compared with the "event" measure of all admissions. This difference, which is analagous to the difference between prevalence and incidence in epidemiology, should be considered when using data from these sources to calculate waiting times.