Components of Sustenance Organization and Nonmetropolitan Population Change: a Human Ecological Investigation

An assumption basic to human ecological theory, as developed by Gibbs, Hawley, Martin and others, states that a significant relationship exists between sustenance organization and population growth or decline. The present investigation transforms this assumption into an empirically verifiable hypothesis. Several components of sustenance organization are operationalized and found to account for a substantial proportion of the variation in relative population change in the nonmetropolitan counties of the United States between 1960 and 1970. The efficacy of sustenance activities as an explanation of population change is tested against a number of competing hypotheses focusing on age and racial composition, economic opportunities and proximity to metropolitan areas. Collectively these alternative explanations add little to the amount of variation in population change accounted for by components of sustenance organization. The implications of these findings for ecological theory are discussed in some detail.