The demography of ethnicity, culture and language

Tribal population is one of the most socially and economically deprived section of Indian communities. Maternal and child health studies among tribal population have been remained largely neglected. The broad objective of the study was to understand the impact of Janani Surakshya Yojana (JSY). The JSY programme – a monetary incentive for promoting institutional deliveries was initiated in year 2005 by Government of India.
The target population for this study was a recently delivered woman (RDW) aged 15-49 years and who delivered a live birth during last two years. A sample of 1046 RDWs was interviewed from 60 villages selected through PPS sampling in Dhar district during Jan. 2008 – Dec. 2009.
The study revealed that the proportion of institutional deliveries has improved among tribal communities because of monetary incentives provided through Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY). However, still most of the women don’t receive any post-partum follow-up or check-ups. Similarly, medically acceptable newborn practices, such as early drying and wrapping of child, early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding are not in practice among Bhils. The study shows an urgent need of IEC intervention among the Bhil tribe related to maternal and child health care practices.

In our study we employ event-history analysis to examine ethnic-specific fertility trends in Kyrgyzstan – one of the post-Soviet states in Central Asia. We estimate indices of first- and higher-order births for a period in the recent history of Kyrgyzstan that was characterized by economic and socio-political instability. We complement the fertility analysis with the analysis of first marriage. The study is based on retrospective survey data collected in 2011/12. Our results reveal profound ethnic differences in both fertility and marriage dynamics, which we interpret as an outcome of differential demographic responses to the generalized societal crisis that followed the collapse of the former USSR and post-crisis economic recovery.

A basic but fundamental question to arise from the dramatic changes in immigration flows is whether countries have moved towards greater recognition of ethnic diversity in the official statistical sources that provide the basis for evidence-based policy. Numerous case studies have examined how and why governments in particular times and places count their populations by ethnicity but studies that are both cross-national and longitudinal are rare. In this paper we present preliminary findings from the Ethnicity Counts? database of ethnicity questions drawn from national censuses and population registers of more than 200 countries spanning 1985 to 2014. We find a clear shift towards the recognition of ethnic difference in national censuses, although this has occurred unevenly across time and place. In any given round, questions on language dominate, followed by ethnicity, mother tongue and ethnic nationality. The language of race remains, for the most part, confined to the former slaveholding societies in the Americas including the Caribbean and some of US territories in Oceania. Interestingly, the shift towards ethnic enumeration has been accompanied by an increase in state inquiries into citizenship and parental birthplace, suggesting that ethnic and civic enumeration operate as dual strategies of state surveillance.

In the last two decades Italy is increasingly taking a multi-ethnic face as a crossroads of peoples and cultures thanks to the gradual and widespread stabilization with a rising contribution of the foreign population in defining the socio-economic, cultural and political set-up of the country.
In recent years there has been a substantial increase of foreign students: in fact, in the last six years, their number doubled reaching an incidence of foreign students on the total school population equal to 7.9%. With particular reference to the Southern regions, we can point out the case of Apulia characterized by a strong youth component and, consequently, by an important number of foreign students. Other than official observations conducted mainly at a national level, data used for this contribution will be those of a field survey organized ad hoc, conducted in collaboration with the Regional School Division and financed by the European Fund for the Integration. Thanks to the several information collected, it has been possible to find out, beyond quantitative aspects, qualitative features very useful for a more complete phenomenon interpretation. Among the different aspects we would like to put the emphasis on the linguistic integration, basing on the consideration that language is the vehicle for a full socio-economic integration.

The Demopædia project has set, as a first goal, to give access to demographers all editions of the Multilingual Demographic Dictionary published since the 50's. Computerization has shown that if the first editions were consistent over the 1100 concepts, very large gaps, most often due to omissions undermined the overall quality of the second edition of the multilingual dictionary, 1492 concepts for the French (1981), 1475 for the English (1982), 1495 Spanish (1985),1555 for the German (1987). The harmonization process consists in maximizing the corpus to 1581 concepts. The Communication will review the volumes already harmonized in French and Italian, published or forthcoming, as the new Asian languages that emerged after the workshops of Paris (2007) and Chiang Mai (2012).
If we may regret a modern third edition, this standardization process is a necessary step. The availability of all texts and cross-languages indexes on any kind of media from paper book up to digital tablets is an asset. This harmonization phase is also an opportunity for the community of demographers to prepare the third edition by proposing a succinct definition of new terms or expressions which are emerging on the Open Encyclopedia Population platform both in English and in about 20 languages.

Andhra Pradesh is the first state in India, to reach the replacement level fertility in spite of having high infant and child mortality; high illiteracy and other unfavorable factors. This is an effort to assess such endeavors both theoretically and empirically. Results indicate that though current use of contraception has increased from 41 percent in 1992-93 to 68 percent in 2005-06, the contribution of female sterilization alone is 63 percent and almost 83 percent of women with two living children are sterilized. Status of sterilized women is higher than women using other methods of contraception. Women status in family increases with increasing years after sterilization. Findings suggest a positive association between sterilization at early age, lower fertility and women status. To surmount the intra-familial controls on them, the women is responding remarkably to family planning program herself by ending reproductive span to get higher status in the family ladder.

In India, the inequities in health status and health care service utilization vary across both geographical and social space. This variation in India is not only due to physical inaccessibility and lack of infrastructure, but due to social inaccessibility. The infant mortality rate, under five mortality, malnourishment among children , prevalence of anemia, malnourishment among women, basic vaccination for children, ANC visits, deliveries at health institutions are some indicators to be considered to study the disparities in health status and service delivery utilization among women and children from different ethnic backgrounds. Women from the Scheduled caste and Scheduled tribe have least access to health care services. This accessibility is further reduced in case of Scheduled caste (dalit) women due to the practice of untouchability, which is still seen in various different forms across India.

The aim of this paper is to present changes in the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and to analyze the demographic developments of titular ethnicities and ethnic minorities. The paper reports from study of ethnic developments since the regained political independence in the beginning of the 1990s. A sudden reversal of the migration and natural reproduction processes changed the population proportion of titular ethnicities, Slavs and other minorities. In the 1990s and the beginning of this century the total number of population of ethnic Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians has decreased, however, the proportion of titular ethnicities has increased, The Baltic States have one of the highest population loss indicators in the world.The excess of deaths over births has been since 1991, and emigration is strongly prevailing in international migration processes, particularly among minorities. The age structure of minorities is relatively older than the structure of titular ethnicities. The largest minority by size are Russians, Poles (great majory of them reside in Lithuania), Belarussians and the Ukrainians. Demographic characteristics (level of ageing, fertility, mortality, net migration, etc.) of main ethnic groups will be presented in the paper.

This paper describes the world’s major religious populations in 2010. We provide new population estimates for eight religious groups: Christians, Muslims, the religiously unaffiliated, Hindus, Buddhists, members of folk or traditional religions, Jews and other world religions. We are the first to reveal median age data for each religion. These results are the product of a multi-year, international collaboration to evaluate and standardize data from thousands of sources to produce the best available social scientific estimates of religious populations in 232 countries and territories of the world.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the Myanmar family is characterized by features of matrifocality as well as to analyze whether there is female dominance in Myanmar .
The respondents in our sample were selected with non-probability sampling due to political situations in Myanmar, along with our limited budget. The sample for the study was drawn from respondents living in several areas in Myanmar, which may represent the regions with different geographic, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. The total sample size was 545 respondents.
The findings are as follows. First, most of the respondents agreed to not only the stronger hierarchical relationships between parents and children but also the priority of family interests. Second, the bonds related to the female family members are stronger than the bonds related to the male family members . Third, mother’s relatives are regarded as more intimate family members. The respondents have received (and provided) economic and emotional support from the mother ‘s side, have visited and lived closer to the mother ‘s side. Fourth, over two-thirds of the respondents agreed that the mother not the father, has more power in the family. Rather than men, women have the responsibility of controlling the family budget, and are more likely to be considered a source of wisdom.