Does demographic knowledge matter? Results of a poll in the New York City watershed.

Abstract

A 1993 telephone survey of 1,150 households in 15 upstate towns in the New York City watershed asked a number of knowledge and attitude questions related to perceptions of national, local, and world population size. Considerable public ignorance of population size was revealed, with gender differences the most critical explanatory variable. Males were much more likely to respond to knowledge questions on population size, and to respond more accurately, even after several other characteristics were held constant. However, knowledge is at best unrelated to measures of concern about population, and even shows a slight tendency to be associated with lower concern.