Demographic Factors Affecting the Nature of Work Participation in an Urbanized Region

Various studies concerning urbanized regions show a general relation among different socio-economic and demographic variables. This study, worked out in the mirror of the distance framework, has the principal object to find out the relation between economic variables (work participation in economic activities) and other socio-demographic variables (literacy, population density and the sex ratio) in a given urbanized region. An econometric approach using linear regression is used.The study is based on the centrifugal approach, i.e. there is a vanishing effect of metropolis as the distance from the central pivot increases towards the outskirt of the city. With a maximum distance of 20 miles’ radius, the region is divided into 18 circles with the central circle of three miles’ radius. To find the impact of transport network, the corridors are constructed by keeping the distance of 2 miles towards the both sides of the each railway line and national highway which divide the entire region - as within corridor region and outside corridor region. The study pertains to the Ahmedabad metropolitan region in the Gujarat State of India. The data given by the Census of India, 1971 have been used to work out the various variables and three sets linear regression equation models have been computed to analyze the effect of sex ratio, population density and literacy on the ratio of non-primary workers to primary workers i.e. the nature of work participation