The Distribution of Population Age Structures in Kansas City

Virtually nothing is known about the distribution of population age structures within cities and their meaning. Yet the character of city neighborhoods and the community services they require are more dependent upon the age structure than upon any other single criterion. This paper reports on an investigation of population age structures in the tracted portion of the Kansas City Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, as of 1960. In the present study, the problem of classifying age structures is overcome with a new index providing a single quantitative measure for each population. When applied to the study area, the index revealed a great variety of age structures, from very young to very old, but no discrete classes. When mapped, a concentric pattern was revealed, with the oldest age structures concentrated in the core area of Kansas City, Missouri. The pattern was examined by means of correlation analysis and 91.65 percent of the spatial variation of age structure was accounted for in terms of eight demographic variables (distilled from an original twenty), proportions of: child-woman ratio; persons married; housing overcrowded; housing renter occupied; single family housing; renter occupied housing; recent movement into the SMSA, and recent movement within the SMSA; and median school years completed. Finally, regression analysis demonstrated that the general equation was very effective for all except the oldest age structures, with seventy-four percent of the census tracts recording residuals smaller than the standard error of estimate.