Community Population Size and Social Heterogeneity: An Empirical Test

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Abstract
Wirth argued that community size increases social heterogeneity but offered no rationale for this association outside the occupational sphere. More recently, subcultural theory has argued that community size leads to heterogeneity in values and attitudes that compose the sets of cultural elements of a subculture. This study is among the first to test this hypothesis. An independent size-heterogeneity relationship is found for political and sexual attitudes, which are representative of the attitudinal elements of subcultures. However, no independent size-heterogeneity relationship is found for the attitude of satisfaction, which is unlikely to be included among the elements of subcultures. It is concluded that community size does increase social heterogeneity, but, consistent with subcultural theory, the relationship is restricted to subcultural elements.

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