台灣行政區域人口密度：1640－2008

A Preliminary Survey of the Population Density of Taiwan: 1640-2008

徐茂炫(Mau-Shan Shi) ； 黃彥豪(Yen-Hao Huang) ； 陳建亨(Chien-Heng Chen)

《經濟論文叢刊》 39卷3期 (2011/09) Pp. 403-423

https://doi.org/10.6277/ter.2011.393.4

摘要

為研究台灣四百年的人口密度之趨勢，本文藉由歷史學者之考據以及當代官方人口統計資料的蒐集，並量化台灣各時期（荷據、明鄭、清領、日治與民國時期）行政區域的土地面積，計算長期台灣人口密度。文獻上有關台灣長期人口密度的計算，並未考慮到行政區域之變遷，僅以全台面積進行計算。然如此而得之人口密度僅包含了人口成長的資訊，難以得窺台灣長期的開發過程中，人口成長與土地空間之間的互動變化。因此，本文進行人口密度計算的同時，考慮各個時間點的人口數據下，所對應的行政區域面積，從而得到包含人口成長及土地空間變化資訊之人口密度指標，並以數字方式呈現台灣四百年來由人煙罕至走向人口稠密的過程。

關鍵字

人口密度 ； 人口史 ； 行政區域

並列摘要

The work provides a preliminary four-century survey of the population density of Taiwan. Unlike the existing literature, which by and large, used the natural area of the whole island as the measuring reference, we take the effective political territory as the denominator. This adaption makes the presentation of the cross-century population density of Taiwan more plausible than conventional presentations in that the five successive political regimes of Taiwan each had a distinct sense of sovereignty as well as territory. Using the area of the whole island to estimate the population density of Taiwan before the 20th century would be misleading since the political territories did not dominate the whole island. Our results thus create a long-term time series for the population density of Taiwan that is advanced and consistent with reality. To our knowledge, our work is possibly the first effort of this type seen in the literature. It is not only important to demography but also to other relevant fields.

並列關鍵字

population density of Taiwan ； population history ； administrative region