Census And Social Structure

First Published in 1978. The census of population is a key source for any study of nineteenth-century England. In association with parish registers and, from 1837, the civil registers recording births, deaths and marriages, population numbers and trends, the essential dynamic basis of population analysis, may be studied. For the present day student they are an incomparable storehouse of data for the historian and social scientist; indeed in almost any study of the nineteenth century we must sooner or later turn to the census for information.

As well as statistical tables, the author has provided a fascinating introduction to the problem of working with statistics and a detailed commentary on the selection of the tables.

This is Volume I of twenty-one in the Class, Race and Social Structure Series. Originally published in 1958, this is the second edition of a study that now focuses on the changing social structure of England and Wales between 1871 and 1961. The main object of this book, therefore, as it was in the first edition, is to introduce the student and the general reader to the maze of social statistics, which have become available, concerning the social structure of England and Wales. The emphasis throughout is on applied or descriptive statistics and a knowledge of statistical techniques therefore those (and they seem to be many) who have an instinctive dislike of mathematics need not be deterred from following the attempt which has been made to analyse the changing social structure with the aid of social statistics.

The physical segregation of social groups in industrial cities has long attracted the attention of social scientist and casual observer alike. In Australia the possibility of mapping the social ecology of large cities has been limited by the absence of sufficiently detailed census of information, a gap remedied in 1961 by the provision of a new range of small area data. Here the author exploits the existence of the new information to present the first intensive social anatomy of any Australian metropolis. Statistics on the residential concentration and segregation of seventy socioeconomic, demographic, ethnic, and religious categories are examined, and the vast complexity and range of these data are reduced by sophisticated techniques of statistical analysis to three theoretically meaningful constructs—social rank, familism, and ethnicity. These constructs are used to develop a typology of social areas which serves as the basis for developing an understanding of and further hypotheses about, urban social structure. Not only does this analysis present a self-contained study of Australia's second largest metropolis, but detailed maps and statistical appendixes provide a benchmark for future social investigations into the urban scene—on subjects such as political preference, immigrant adjustment, poverty, crime, delinquency, and urban planning.