Measures of Nominal and Ordinal Population Diversity

Abstract

A measure of population diversity across a set of categories such as racial and ethnic groups is presented that clearly demonstrates how the index captures deviations from a standard of maximum diversity. The measure is applied to subareas of a larger area such as census tracts and is employed to develop 2 alternative measures of neighborhood diversity for the larger area. This and other measures of diversity assume that the population is classified into a nominal, unordered set of categories. The distribution of the population into a set of rank-ordered categories introduces the additional element that the pattern of a distribution across the categories should be considered in assessing levels of diversity. A measure of ordinal diversity and corresponding measures of neighborhood ordinal diversity are presented to address this.