Sideline demographic methods and data

Both demographic transition theory and evolutionary life history theory propose that fertility responds to changes in mortality. This relationship exists at population level, and may be mediated by psychological mechanisms causing individuals to lower fertility as mortality rates fall. Controlled experiments have found that individuals faced with cues of high mortality express increased/accelerated fertility preferences, and reduced support for birth control policies. UK research shows that socioeconomically deprived people are both less likely to terminate pregnancies and are less accepting of abortion than wealthier people. Health disparities may mean that perceptions of increased mortality and morbidity for poorer people might decrease motivation to terminate pregnancy when young. A randomised controlled online experiment here tests if mortality cues influence abortion attitudes. We predict that:
1) Mortality salience cues will a) decrease reported approval of abortion b) increase reported motivation to have children sooner.
2) Longevity cues will a) increase reported approval of abortion b) decrease reported motivation to have children sooner.
A sample of 256 individuals from England and Wales, aged 18-25, 50% men, 50% women will complete online questionnaires, and data will be analysed using GLM and MANOVA techniques.

Hitherto lack of a robust methodological application in demographic transition analysis is the rationale of this study. In an effort to fill this gap, this study advances ‘Change-Point analyzer’ as a new methodological tool for assessment of the progress and changes in population and health indicators. A long-term assessment of ‘change-point analyses’ of trends in population and health indicators such as IMR, LEB, TFR and Population size in India show multiple points of critical changes. The defining feature of ‘change-point analyzer’ is that, it detects subtle changes that are often missed in simple trend line plots and also quantified the volume of change that is not possible in simple trend line plots. Measured change points of demographic and health trends are crucial for understanding the true trajectories of trends and patterns and progress in demographic transition. This study, therefore, adds significantly to the evolutionary interpretation of critical change-points in long-term trajectories of population vis-a-vis population policy shifts in India. Evolutionary interpretation of the long-run trends helps in, not only discussing past and current trends, but provides a number of insights for future directions, which helps in evolution and monitoring of population policies.

Hospitals and other health care establishments are collecting huge amounts of data about patients. With development of information technologies in 1960’s there was also progress in systems for efficient processing of these data. DRGs (Diagnosis Related Groups) was formed in USA among the first classification systems that categorizes hospitalization cases into groups, so that groups are homogeneous from the clinical and cost-related viewpoints. Categorized data serves for calculating fees charged for acute medical care. DRG system spread rapidly from USA to other countries (e.g. Australia, Austria and Germany) and since 1995 there were efforts to adopt the system also in the Czech Republic. In 2011 the new way of DRGs implementation into Czech health care system was developed by IBM Company to automate and streamline the algorithm of processing the data file with all cases of inpatients from the reference year. Since 2012 almost 75 % of the inpatient health care costs have been calculated using DRGs. This paper shows the possible use of statistical methods for the health care cost determination on the example of the Czech Republic. The outputs contain graphical representation and the selected characteristics of the data set with complete information about the inpatient care provided in 2010 in the Czech Republic.

Different surveys were giving different results about malnutrition of young children. The objective of this paper are: (i) to assess the quality of anthropometric and age data of children of the Multiple Cluster Indicator Survey (MICS) of Somalia 2006, and (ii) to identify the sources of errors and (iii) to suggest recommendations for improving data. Consistency checking of the indices, deviation from the expected pattern of age distribution, age specific malnutrition, and distribution of digits of weight and height were used as measuring tools of errors. Some qualitative data were collected by interviewing key survey persons and checking the filled in questionnaire and data files. National Nutrition Survey (NNS) and DHS data were used for comparison. Some errors in weight and height data were present. But mainly error in age makes the estimate of malnutrition unexpectedly high. Different sources of errors were identified. Error in age, weight and height data need serious attention to make estimate of malnutrition meaningful. Good training, supervision, and equipment are essential for obtaining good quality weight and height data. In addition to all of these, necessary methods and tools including a calendar of local events should be developed, tested and used for good age data.

This paper aims to discuss the implementation of contemporary ICT application , called short messaging service (SMS), in supporting the monitoring process during the field enumeration period. This technology was remarkable useful, effective and cheap to overcome the field monitoring in Timor Leste which has geographical and infrastructure barriers. Best practices in the management along with field monitoring using SMS reports were believed to have positive impact on the result of the 2010 Timor Leste population and Housing Census. The differences of total population in Timor Leste between preliminary results (reported on October 2010, one month after field works completed) and final results (reported on April 2011) is only 173 persons out of 1.07 million.

Keywords: population and housing census, ICT implementation, SMS reporting.

Age is one of the most basic and important information collected in almost all demographic and health surveys. Most of the demographic researches on fertility, reproductive health and contraception focus on females of particular age group who are in their reproductive period. Important demographic indicators like fertility, contraception and mortality are estimated on the basis of reporting of the female respondents. This particular study makes an attempt in exploring the degree of matching and mismatch and its spatial variation in reporting of the age of the husbands by the wives in India. Multivariate analysis has been used to find the causal relationship beteen various socio-economic-demographic background and the mismatch in reporting of age of the husband. The present study analyses the concordance and discordance of the reporting of the husband's age as reported by the wife and by the husband separately by using a nationally representative sample size of 42185 couples. It is found that in India about three fifth of the cases (58 percent), there is mismatch(discordance) in reporting of husband's age as reported by the wife and the husband.

This paper aims to explore the concept of household head in the Population Census whether gender preference exists or not. Furthermore, to evaluate the factors which affect to the conception of the head of household in each country being observed? The countries are Italy, Austria and Indonesia. In addition to that, the cultural context and socio-economic factors are also being observed in terms of inclusion in the main determination of conception. The literature review and some data evidences on some indicators will show to prove the assumption and hypothesis. The data source of this research paper is derived from IPUM-International Data, except for Indonesian Population Census data set which is obtained from BPS Statistics Indonesia. The main purpose of this research is to support better design of population census instrument for improvement of data quality and methods with gender sense design. The result of this research paper will be very useful in the refining concept of the head of household in the population census data collection. Finally, the gender bias in the population census of household head concept can be overcome and can depict the real condition of population demographic on gender basis.

New general event-centered demographic concepts are introduced that provide a generalization of reduced events and event-history methods. They provide a general way of defining indicators where every event contributes to the phenomenon of interest. The basic concepts that apply to all event-centered measures are defined, including the processes of reduction and aggregation. Reduction requires the precise location of an event in a Lexis space, and a reduction factor against which the event is measured up. Different reduction factors lead to different indicators. Aggregation defines summary measures of reduced events. Special attention is paid to birth cohort size as a reduction factor. The indicators are the result of concurrent phenomena like mortality, fertility and migration without requirinng their previous isolation. Exposure-based reduction factors lead to standard demographic indicators such as age-specific rates or the TFR. . Period and cohort examples of reduced birth and death measures are provided, such as the Birth Replacement Sum or the Death Cohort. All the concepts are defined at the event level, and can be estimated from vital registration microdata, aggregate data or survey microdata. The concepts are illustrated with examples of application, and are connected to alternative aggregate estimates and ratios.

Data collected through demographic surveys provide complete as well as truncated birth history, which may be a five, six or seven year period prior to the survey date. When past fertility rates are well documented and one is interested only in the current trend of fertility, which is highly affected by high contraceptive prevalence; data based on truncated birth history may be suitable and economical. However, there is an earnest need for developing suitable analytical tools for analysing such types of data. In the present study, we have used an index in different age segment of female based on a model suggested by Lawless (1987) and also discussed its property. The index explains the shape of the changing pattern of current fertility experience for the data considered in this study. The data for the analysis have been taken from first and third round of National Family Health Survey of Uttar Pradesh. The findings reveal that education, age, religion/caste and place of residence are strong co-variates of fertility regulation.

The age-specific fertility curves normalized by total fertility can be considered as the density of the age at childbearing distribution. Generally the shape of age specific fertility rate changes from convex to concave after it reaches its maximum value. Proportion bearing children before age 35 may be interpreted as tempo of fertility and rest may be interpreted as excess fertility, which is risky for mother as well as child both. Thus, the purpose of this study is to observe the pattern of fertility over time and space keeping the above idea into mind. To experience the modest change in fertility, the estimated total fertility rate, are computed for the data through simple mathematical model. For this purpose the secondary data on age-specific fertility rate and its forward and backward cumulative distributions have been considered. Also the validity of proposed models has been checked through appropriate technique.