Poster Session on Health, mortality and longevity (2)

The last century in Brazil witnessed profound social, economic and demographic changes. According to the Bureau of Census, female life expectancy at birth increased from 34.6 years in 1910 to 77.26 years in 2010. At the same time, the educational composition of the population has changed dramatically. In the 1940s, only 25 percent of the children aged 5 to 14 years were enrolled in school. Currently, nearly all children aged 7 and 14 years attend school, and positive advances in attendance rates have been also documented for the secondary and tertiary education. In this article, we examine the extent to which changes in the age-specific distribution of education, between 1960 and 2010, have contributed to the decline in adult mortality among women in Brazil. Our analysis follows other applications in the literature (e.g. Preston and Stokes 2011) to measure the reduction in mortality that would occur if exposure to specific risk factors were changed to a counterfactual level, also known as the population attributable fraction. The effects are not trivial: about 41% of life expectancy gains at age 30, between 1960 and 2010, are attributable to changes in educational composition of the female population.

We aim to explain regional disparities in mortality in Poland and their changes over the years 1991-2010 taking into account mortality from selected causes of death. The list of causes of death includes causes medically amenable and those dependent on behavioral factors (smoking-related, external causes and Ischemic Heart Disease), but also ill-defined causes. Regional inequalities in mortality are quantified with values of Mean Logarithmic Deviation estimated for regional life-expectancies and separately for gains in life-expectancies in the Polish regions resulting from elimination of selected causes of death. Changes in the value of these indeces are further decomposed to answer the question concerning the source of change in health inequality between Polish regions. Inequalities in life-expectancy between the regions are relatively small and stable over the study period, but the inequalities related to selected causes differ. With
the exception of medically amenable causes, this effect is stronger among males. In general, the largest negative effect characterizes medically-amenable causes of death and mortality from IHD. Effect of smoking-related and ill-defined causes is relatively small for the inequality in mortality between Polish voivodships.

Rates of suicide mortality have declined substantially over the past 25 years in most OECD countries. Unfortunately, since 1985 suicide rates have increased by 20% in Japan and by 250% in South Korea. Suicide mortality has increased at an especially rapid pace in South Korea since 2000. To help disentangle the effects of age-related factors, secular change, and birth cohort membership, we estimated a series of intrinsic estimator age-period-cohort models of suicide mortality rates in Japan and South Korea between 1985 and 2010. Results indicate that age-related factors explain much of the increase in Japan, where a large segment of the population has moved into a high-risk age range of 40-65. In South Korea, the increase is driven by multiple factors – including rising period effects, a growing elderly population, and strong cohort effects for those born between the Great Depression and the aftermath of World War II.

Many Liberian children suffer the burden of malnutrition. Studies have revealed its consequences on children may be severe and irreversible with long lasting implications on those who suffer malnutrition in early childhood. Mothers are known to be the main providers of primary care to children, thus understanding the contribution of maternal characteristics on child nutrition is key towards addressing the problem. This paper examines the role of maternal socio-demographic characteristics on nutritional status of children measured by stunting, wasting and underweight. Analysis of DHS (2007) data indicated almost a third of children were chronically undernourished, a fifth underweight whilst six percent was acutely undernourished. This is significantly high by Sub Saharan Africa standards. Significant determinants of nutritional status were region of residence, age and sex of child, wealth and migration status during the war. Efforts should address enhancing women’s status in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

There is convincing scientific evidence of a negative association between socio-economic position and mortality at different stages of life, especially adulthood. For children and adolescents, the evidence is less extensive and convincing as low levels of child mortality hinder detailed analyses. The aim of this study is to investigate the social patterning of Belgian child mortality using linked register data on mortality and census data on socioeconomic characteristics. The data for this analysis are rather exceptional outside the Scandinavian context and allow for an in-depth investigation of childhood inequalities. Several indicators of parental socioeconomic position and socio-demographic background are integrated and analyses are stratified in order to find out to what extent inequalities vary by sex and age group (0-4, 5-9 and 10-14). Integration of causes of death data provide additional clues on the origin of inequalities during childhood. Information is available for two periods in time (1991-1995 and 2001-2004), allowing for an examination of time trends in child mortality differences. The research results confirm the international patterns, differences generally being larger at young ages, among boys, for external causes and showing an increasing trend between the 1990s and the 2000s.

Background: Almost half of the preschool children are stunted and nearly 60 million children are underweight in India (IIPS & ORG Macro, 2006). The present study investigates the role of child feeding practices and its correlation with child nutritional indicators among Indian children based on data collected during 2005-2006 (NFHS-3, INDIA) using Ruel and Menon’s method with some modification in Indian context on children of 3-36 months of age. Methodology and findings: Data collected on breastfeeding, and complimentary feeding practices were used to construct age specific child feeding index with explanatory variables like, wealth index, birth order, mother’s educational status, and religion using binary and multivariate analysis. Conclusion: There are wide diversity in feeding practices among Indian children by different regions and SES. The proportion of children with better feeding practices are having better growth pattern. The richer, male children from southern region with high educated mothers are less likely to be stunted than their counterpart. There is wide diversity in giving animal products and meal frequencies across different age group. The stunting is strongly associated with child feeding indices especially in children of 6-9 months. The stunting is very high among children with poor feeding practices

This paper assessed whether a north-south gradient in the health of the Albania population remained following the transition to a market economy in the 1990s. Data from the 2002 Albanian Living Standards Measurement Survey was analysed for two dependent variables - chronic illness and acute illness. Multilevel logistic variance components models were fitted by stepwise model selection. The results showed that regional disparities exist for both chronic and acute illness. The traditional pattern of regional disparities in health remains for acute illness. The coastal region, however, appears to have the highest levels of self-reported chronic illness. It is argued that the higher levels in the coastal region are not likely to be due to a fundamental change in the regional patterns of health status in Albania at present but due to the huge north-south internal migration that occurred during the 1990s.

Son preference refers to the attitude that sons are more important and more valuable than daughters. A complex interplay of economic and social factors determines the benefits and cost of a child. Son preference is still very strong in India. In order to maintain small families and have desired sex composition of the children, people may try methods such as sex selective abortion. Therefore this paper tries to look into, the desire of women to have at least one male child and child care. It is assumed that the child care may be better for the male child. The study uses primary in 2010, the sample size is 330. The study area comprises of 11 villages from Rajarhat CD block of 24-north Parganas in West Bengal, India. The results show higher percentage of women desired to have at least one male child, women stated economic and social reasons for wanting at least one male child. The child care shows that almost similar care was taken for both male and female children, irrespective of the fact that high percentage of women wanted male children. Much significant difference in the time spent on child care and daily child care is seen for the male and the female children. The preference for male child is more in terms of desire but this necessarily does not transform into discriminatory practices in the day to day child care

Despite profound distributional concerns, studies on undernutrition in India (or elsewhere) have exclusively focused on inter-personal inequalities whereas estimates regarding the magnitude of intersecting inequalities are unavailable. As such, an explicit concern for horizontal intersecting inequalities not only substantiates the intrinsic concern for equity but also offers vital policy insights that are evidently lost while engaging with a thoroughgoing individualistic approach. With this motivation, we apply the group analogues of Atkinson’s index and Gini coefficient to unravel the disproportionate burden of undernourishment borne by rural and historically vulnerable caste groups. Furthermore, the prominent determinants of inter-group disparities are identified through Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition analysis. In concluding, the paper calls for explicit targeting of backward castes across the country and improved inter-sectoral collaboration to ensure equitable access to education, healthcare, water and sanitation, particularly across underdeveloped regions.

The present paper has explored the possible shift in age-sex structure and morbidity pattern among the population of India and states by 2051. “Morbidity and health care” schedule of NSSO 60th round survey, projected population and SRS reports have been used for analysis purpose. LEB for males and females will increase by 10 and 11years respectively during 2006-51. Proportion of elderly will increase at a rapid pace younger population will decline rather slowly. Age specific morbidity prevalence increases slowly for communicable diseases but the pace is much higher for non-communicable diseases. Disease burden shifts towards NCDs with the change in age structure, which shows some of the states facing NCDs as 3/4th of their disease burden. The shift in the disease burden calls for an urgent need for investment in health infrastructure as most of the NCDs are chronic in nature and seeks long term care.