majority of population in towns and cities comprises by
Answers
It mainly depends on the medical , transportation, education facilities and job opportunities for the people . So most of the people living in towns and villages move towards cities.
Answer:
NCHS data systems are often used to study the association between urbanization level of residence and health and to monitor the health of urban and rural residents. Conducting such analyses requires an urban-rural classification scheme. This report describes a six-level urban-rural classification scheme developed by the National Center for Health Statistics for the 3,141 U.S. counties and county-equivalents. The most urban category consists of large metropolitan central counties and the most rural category consists of nonmetropolitan noncore counties.
The county classifications are based on the following information: (1) the 2003 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) definitions of metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties (with revisions through 2005); (2) the Rural-Urban Continuum Codes and the Urban Influence Codes classifications developed by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and (3) county-level data on several variables from Census 2000 and 2004 postcensal population estimates.
This classification scheme, unlike others that have been developed since 2003, separates large metropolitan counties into two categories: large metro central and large metro fringe. These two categories were created because of striking differences in several health measures between residents of these two types of counties. Discriminant analysis was used to verify the classification of counties into these two categories.
1. Background
1.1 Urbanization level and health
Communities in the United States differ considerably on measures of health. Urbanization level has long been recognized as a key characteristic when studying health disparities among communities. In the United States, residents in "rural" areas tend to have poorer health than those in more urbanized areas (1-3). In addition, residents of central cities in metropolitan areas of 1 million or more population fare worse on many health measures than do residents of the suburban areas surrounding the central cities. Identifying and understanding the underlying causes of the health disparities among communities is key in designing effective public health policies and interventions (4).
1.2 County as building block
Numerous classification schemes have been devised to categorize communities by urbanization level (2, 3, 5-9). In the United States the geographic unit used in most of these classification schemes is the county (local designation may be county, parish, borough), largely because of the relative stability of county boundaries. In addition, except in New England, counties and equivalent entities generally are the primary political units of local government and have programmatic importance at the federal and state levels. Further, county-level measures of health, social, and economic characteristics are widely available, in contrast to the paucity of data available at the sub-county level.
1.3 Definition of Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Counties
Many of the urbanization classification schemes make use of the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) metropolitan statistical area designations. The OMB metropolitan-nonmetropolitan designations use the county as the basic building block. OMB defines metropolitan statistical areas according to published standards that are applied to Census Bureau data. A metropolitan, or metro, area is defined as a core area containing a large population nucleus together with adjacent communities having a high degree of economic and social integration with that core. All counties within a metropolitan statistical area are classified as metropolitan. Counties not within a metropolitan statistical area are considered nonmetropolitan.
While the basic concept of the metropolitan statistical area has not changed since its inception, the specific criteria for defining these areas have been revised periodically, generally prior to a decennial census. Thus, urbanization classification schemes based on the OMB metropolitan statistical areas must be updated periodically to reflect both changes in the criteria used to determine the metropolitan or nonmetropolitan status of counties and changes in population. The most recent OMB metropolitan area standards were adopted in December 2000 and new areas resulting from applying these standards to the 2000 census were released in June 2003, and updated several