Revision as of 16:15, 13 November 2006

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In, census practice a distinction is made between the resident population ¹ or de jure population ¹ of a given area, which consists of the people who habitually live in that area, and the actual population ², de facto population ², enumerated population ² or present-in-area population ², which is made up of the persons in the area on census clay. In the resident population, temporary absentees ⁴ are included with those permanent residents ³who are present in the area on census day; the present-in-area population consists of residents together with visitors ⁵ or transients ⁵. The two methods of enumeration will give different results even for the country as a whole. The place where a person lives is called the place of residence ⁶. For administrative reasons, certain persons who live together in large communities are often separately enumerated, for example inmates of boarding schools, military personnel in barracks, prisoners, etc. These people form the institutional population ⁷. Special rules are used to enumerate vagrants ⁸ or persons of no fixed abode ⁸.

• 6. The term domicile is a technical legal term, which in the United States of America is called the legal residence and denotes the place where a person is legally deemed to reside. This place may differ from his actual residence.
• 7. In the United States of America the term population in quasi-households is used and the term institutional population is reserved for persons living in correctional institutions, hospitals for mental disease and tuberculosis, homes for the aged, handicapped and dependent or neglected persons.

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In many countries a rural area ¹ is defined as an administrative district in which the population is below a certain level (often taken as 2,000). Other areas are called urban areas ². The rural population ³ is the population living in rural areas, the urban population ⁴ that living in urban areas. Rules for allocating the population of particular areas to the urban and rural sector respectively differ in different countries.

• 3. rural adj. — ruralization n., growth in the proportion of persons living in rural areas.
  "rural population" should not be confused with "agricultural population" (359-2).
• 4. urban adj. — urbanization n., growth in the proportion of persons living in urban areas.

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The density of population ¹ or population density ¹ is an index showing the relationship between a population and the area in which it lives. The simplest density index ² is obtained by dividing the total population by the area of the territory and is generally expressed as the number of persons per acre, square kilometre or square mile. The scatter of the population ³ depends on the type of settlement ⁴ or habitat ⁴. Some writers have computed the population centre ⁵ of a given area by the methods used to find the centre of gravity in applied mathematics; each individual in the population is given an equal weight.

• 1. density n. — dense adj.

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Where the intensity of settlement of different populations is to be compared and other factors besides surface area are taken into account, comparative density indices ¹ are sometimes computed. There are various such indices, among which we may mention the density of population per unit of cultivable area ² and the density of the agricultural population per unit of cultivable area ³. Occasionally these indices are based on the cultivated area ⁴ rather than the cultivable area ⁵. The density may also be expressed as a relation between population and total economic resources; the maximum potential density ⁶ or population carrying capacity ⁶, showing the relationship between resources and the maximum population that can be supported with these resources, may be considered. The concept of optimum density ⁷, i. e., the density which will give the maximum real income per head with given resources, is used in population theory.