Full Citation
Title: Analyzing and interpreting spatial and temporal variability of the United States county population distributions using Taylor's law
Citation Type: Journal Article
Publication Year: 2019
ISBN:
ISSN: 1932-6203
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0226096
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: We study the spatial and temporal variation of the human population in the United States (US) counties from 1790 to 2010, using an ecological scaling pattern called Taylor’s law (TL). TL states that the variance of population abundance is a power function of the mean population abundance. Despite extensive studies of TL for non-human populations, testing and interpreting TL using data on human populations are rare. Here we examine three types of TL that quantify the spatial and temporal variation of US county population abundance. Our results show that TL and its quadratic extension describe the mean-variance relationship of county population distribution well. The slope and statistics of TL reveal economic and demographic trends of the county populations. We propose TL as a useful statistical tool for analyzing human population variability. We suggest new ways of using TL to select and make population projections.
Url: https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226096
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Xu, Meng; Cohen, Joel E.
Periodical (Full): PLOS ONE
Issue: 12
Volume: 14
Pages: e0226096
Data Collections: IPUMS NHGIS
Topics: Land Use/Urban Organization, Population Data Science, Population Mobility and Spatial Demography
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