Poster session on Historical demography

Age of the couples is one of the most basic and important information collected in almost all demographic and health surveys. This particular study makes an attempt in exploring the extent of age difference and the change over time among the couples in India. It also analyses the impact of other socio-economic, demographic and cultural factors in explaining the variation in age difference among the couples. The study analyses the age difference among the husbands and wives on the basis of the reporting of the age of the couples by the wives by using a nationally representative sample of the three rounds of National Family Health Survey conducted at three different points of time (1991-92, 1998-99 and 2005-06). The present study uses the data of 257629 (combined data for NFHS-1, NFHS-2 and NFHS-3) currently married women who married only once. It is found that in India the age difference among the couples has decreased over the period of time from 7 years during 1956-60 to 5.2 years during 2001-05.

Most research on intergenerational processes focuses on two generation connections between individuals and their children or parents. This research ignores grandparent influences and longer legacy effects. Mare’s 2010 PAA Presidential Address suggested mechanisms through which multigenerational effects may occur and are most likely to be strongest. This paper examines various types of multigenerational influence: (1) effects of socioeconomic positions of grandparent and even more remote ancestors on the standing of individuals; (2) legacy effects of extreme advantage and disadvantage many generations in the past; (3) multigenerational effects on demographic behavior itself; (4) heterogeneous multigenerational effects in populations that contain more than one social mobility regime; and (5) long run multigenerational effects that result from mobility-fertility interactions in population dynamics. We illustrate these effects through analyses of genealogical data from the Qing Dynasty Imperial Lineage and from population registry data for Liaoning, China over the past several centuries. Our results suggest that multigenerational influence is much more multi-faceted than previous speculations and empirical investigations have implied.

Indirect estimation of age of human skeletons and the proper methods to attain it are basic to studies of past populations. One of the basic questions is how the life spans and pattern of adult mortality may differ from the contemporary situation. In the 10 years since the publication of the Rostock Manifesto, which famously set forth aims for paleodemography, recent investigation in improving age estimation, especially for older adults, has increased. New methods, such as transition analysis, try to meet the Rostock goal of better estimations of the probability of age given the stages of age indicator(s), of a target population of unknown ages at death. However, some of these seem to result in unrealistic old age estimates, which are generally just brushed aside as quirks of the methods used. However, if results are unreasonable at older ages, why should they be better at slightly younger adult ages? What might be reasonable life spans in preindustrial, non-Western populations? We investigate this problem with skeletal samples from two neighborhoods in Teotihuacan, Mexico. Investigating how differences in the Precolumbian urban environment might have influenced adult mortality and adult lifespan should prove a corrective to pure model-based estimations

Census survival ratios (CSRs) are the oldest and most widely applicable methods of estimating adult mortality. For populations with negligible migration they can provide excellent results of both mortality and expectation of life. Swanson and Tedrow developed a new approach for using CSRs that is less involved than the existing approach. Tests on available data indicate that the alternative approach works reasonably well. In this paper we extend the use of their approach to a population defined by ethnicity, Native Hawaiians. We use the early 20th century as the period for this examination, which is a time when this population was subject to negligible migration. The development of life tables for this population allows us to compare our life expectancy estimates to those derived from the “gold standard” of life expectancy. Our examination suggests that the alternative CSR method works well in estimating life expectancy for Native Hawaiians, which suggests that it can be used elsewhere. Our study also has revealed some cautionary notes about the effect of migration, net census undercount error, and changing conceptions of ethnic identity.