Concentration and spatial association of population: An application to Catalonia in the XX century

This paper aims to propose and assess the implementation of a methodological procedure to characterize the population's level of concentration and its spatial association, based on a specially designed concentration measure (IC) and on the spatial association statistics Moran's I and Gi*. This procedure is empirically tested for Catalonia (Spain) during the twentieth century using data from the Nomenclátor of the Population Census. Three main conclusions arise from the results: the suitability of IC as concentration measure, the validity of the Nomenclátor as a data source to study population's distribution, and the significant contribution that the use of spatial statistics makes to the analysis and interpretation of geographic data.