Poster session on Spatial demography

In this study we inquire upon certain pathways, i.e. material psychological and behavioral, which are known to have impact on health. The study is placed in an urban village of Varanasi, which historically suffers socio-spatial exclusion. This study is built upon sequential exploratory research design, a genre of mixed methodology of research. A total of 150 adult males participated in two phase of data collection, accomplished through various instruments like in-depth interviews, group discussion and questionnaire based survey. The data collected in different face were analyzed combinedly to get a complete picture. The inhabitants of the study area were segregated from urban surrounding socially and spatially. They have health problems originating from insanitation and poverty. Their perception was controlled by old rural values and experiences; and practices were curious mix of rurality and urbanism.

Current research proves a certain “stability” about the Jews living in the Ghetto, but the complex dynamics of a population secluded in its borders deserve further investigation: in fact, co-existence in a narrow place generally meant a redefinition of the internal areas. The Jewish community was frequently facing lack of space, a problem whose solution was thought to lie in the vertical development of buildings.
The poster proposed is just a sample of a major project having the purpose to describe the Ghetto meticulously. Thanks to the information gathered in the Pius Gregorian Urban Cadastre, it has been possible to identify the floors of every single building, or shop, within the seclusion.
The graphics layout shows a direct connection between demographical/social data and their architectural implications. The 3D simplification appears to be the most immediate one, as it makes it possible to read urban fabric and vertical development contemporarily. A more accurate elaboration of historical data is anyway needed in order wholly understand the phenomena just described.

Sleep loss is becoming more prevalent in both developed and developing countries. Evidence accumulated over 40 years indicates a strong association between short and poor sleep and all-cause mortality. People with disadvantaged socioeconomic status present more stress and therefore serious sleep problems. Neighborhood disadvantage can double the health risks of poor sleep for low-income people who live in disadvantaged areas. This study examines the relative effect of individual economic hardship, psychological stress and neighborhood disadvantages on the chance of being poor sleep from 2001 to 2005. It also explores the geographical variations of neighborhood unemployment rate on average prevalence of poor sleep controlling for individual-level SES. Multilevel models and geographically weighted regression (GWR) are used. National representative data (SDTS, 2001 and 2005) is used. Poor sleep is defined by insomnia and restless sleep. Women reported more insomnia and more restless sleep than men. This study found double jeopardy of individual and neighborhood economic hardships on the risk of poor sleep. Certain area of Taiwan has more adverse consequences from neighborhood unemployment rate. As poor sleep increases from 2001 to 2005, it becomes more spatial clustering from 2001 to 2005.

Population of Saudi Arabia is homogenous in many respects. Being the largest country in the Arabian Peninsula in terms of both geographic area and also population Saudi Arabia receives great attention of Demographers and Social Scientists.
This Regional analysis of Saudi Arabian National Census 2010 Preliminary Results aims at understanding (i) rural urban composition (ii) governorates and centers and (iii) urban centers in the Kingdom and (ii) to assess population pressure in each geographic unit.
Population of Saudi Arabia is distributed across 13 regions. Each region has governorates that coordinates to assure quality of life. Governorates are further divided into centers, which are urban, semi urban or rural in nature. Population distribution is not uniform in centers. Efforts are needed at national level to reclassify and redefine administrative areas namely Governorates and Centers.

Location has also manifestation on the morbidity pattern, knowledge and attitude for treatment seeking apart from socio-cultural, economic and demographic factors. The present paper aims to explore impact of neighbourhood effect on women’s reproductive morbidity and their treatment seeking behaviour using DLHS-3 data. Five regions were delineated on the basis of geographical proximity as districts bordering with Nepal (4), West Bengal (4), Jharkhand (6), Uttar Pradesh (6) and interior districts (17). There was high reporting of morbidity and low treatment seeking for the morbidities in the districts bordering with Nepal and West while the condition was vise-versa for districts near to the state capital and UP border. It is found that in addition to migration of husband and accessibility to the services, the ‘neighbourhood effect’ also plays significant role in regulating the health of women living in districts bordering with UP and Jharkhand.

The purpose of the present paper is to examine the range of policy responses to poverty and population change in high-poverty regions of Germany and the United States. In Germany, many counties in the northeastern states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Brandenburg experienced substantial population losses after unification, reflecting high rates of unemployment in those areas. All projections point to a continuation of this trend. In the United States, the three poorest regions are Central Appalachia, the lower Mississippi Delta and the Texas Borderland. The paper discusses reasons for why in some regions, population declines in response to unfavorable economic conditions and grows in other regions with similar conditions. It also highlights the changing role of the state over time and its difference between the two countries in explaining the differences in policy responses to poverty and population change in the four regions. The paper closes with a discussion of the implications of these policy differences for the regions.

This paper uses a methodology to forecast the spatial distribution of households and empirically addresses how the urban sprawl within a geographical boundary evolves over time. Our case study is the city of Belo Horizonte in 2020 and 2030. The city of almost 2.6 million inhabitants is the third most economically important in Brazil and has witnessed an important trend of increasing density and verticalization. The hypotheses used in the simulation were created from the following data sources: the Brazilian demographic census of 2000 and 2010, zoning laws of Belo Horizonte, the Development Plan for the Metropolitan Area of Belo Horizonte (PDDI, 2010), and spatial data from urban sprawl. This information delineates the characteristics and conditions for future housing growth and density. We use Complex Systems models (cellular automata-CA) within a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment to simulate prospective scenarios, and thus achieving precision at very low scales (an intra-urban scale named “blocks”) in 2020 and 2030. The empirical exercise in Belo Horizonte provides a contribution to the analysis of demographic dynamics applied to urban and regional planning, and in particular, how to integrate small area population projections to information on land use and occupation of urban land.

Globally there has been an increase in the prevalence of obesity over the last two decades and low and middle-income countries in particular are being threatened with rising levels of obesity. Research on obesity in developing countries has focused mostly on rural urban differences without necessarily explaining the salient factors that account for these differences. This paper examines the likely regional socioeconomic and socio-cultural factors that explain the differences in obesity prevalence across Ghana. The study draws on data from two nationally representative surveys; the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health and the 2005-2006 Ghana Living Standards Survey. The results show marked regional variations in socio-economic status and obesity levels. The Greater Accra region which had the most number of households (45.9%) belonging to the highest wealth quintile was also the most urbanized region (90% urban). Greater Accra also recorded the highest prevalence of obesity (19.3%) while the three northern regions which were the least urbanized and had the lowest number of households in the highest wealth quintile had obesity prevalence of less than 5%. These variations in socio-economic status and obesity levels demonstrate that there is more to the problem of obesity in Ghana than just rural urban differences.

This paper will describe about the young population declining problem, especially in rural areas in the Amami islands that have an impact on a lack of manpower in the processing of agricultural land. This condition can lead to the occurrence of phenomena depopulation. Related to these issues, The "One Village One Product" or OVOP program has been implemented in Japan including in Kagoshima prefecture. This program has a vision to revitalizing the remote villages, to solve the problem of depopulation due to migration of village youngsters to the big cities for job seeking. Inspired by the successful implementation OVOP in Japan, many Asian countries, including Indonesia, have started to adopt this program since 2009, considering that the depopulation problem also occurs in some rural areas in Indonesia. Experience and best practices that have been carried out in Japan can be used as a learning process. The data sources of this paper are based on the results of a study conducted in July 2011. This study is using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative method approached by an interview with selected informant in the Amami Islands, and quantitative secondary data such as population trend, outmigrations trend.and the employment population trend in Amami Islands.

In Tanzania, despite the fact that majority of population lives within 5 kilometers of a primary health facility, utilization of these facilities is limited owing to poor quality of primary healthcare. This study tests the hypothesis that women bypass the nearest primary health facility in order to receive better care for antenatal care (ANC) elsewhere and assesses covariates of this behavior. We combine original data on mothers with recent pregnancies from cross-sectional household survey (n=912) with health facility survey collected in 2011 in Rufiji, Kilombero and Ulanga Districts. Bypassers are defined as mothers who opt to seek care at facilities other than the nearest to her home village. Multivariate logistic regression is used to examine the maternal and contextual factors associated with odds of bypassing proximate facilities. Initial results show more than half of women interviewed sought these services at a health facility outside of home village rather than at the closest dispensary. Bypassers were 5 to 6 times more likely to visit health center or hospital than primary dispensary. The strong patterns of bypassing reveal mothers’ preferences for better ANC services, despite additional costs and time involved. This suggests crucial need to improve the quality of community-based ANC services to achieve health equity.