Formal demography, innovative methodologies, and their applications

In this paper, we present a method for reconstructing and smoothing fertility trends by combining birth histories from multiple surveys. Data used in the paper come from World fertility surveys and Demographic and Health surveys . This method usesPoisson regression and restricted cubic splines to produce detailed long term fertility trends. In the first part, we present the method and illustrate its application by combining several fertility surveys in Colombia. Next, simulated birth histories are used to validate the method in a variety of situations. Finally, the method is applied to several countries, from various parts of the world, with varying numbers of surveys and with different data quality problems. Finally, these trends are compared with published fertility trends.

Traditionally the progress in the demographic transition is studied by the indicators CBR and CDR. Attempts were made later on to represent the demographic transition by means of an index called the demographic transition index. Total fertility rate (TFR) and Life Expectancy at Birth (LEB) were used in constructing the above index. In the present paper an attempt has been made to develop new indices for studying the inter-linkages between the demographic transition and the ageing of the population by using the age specific fertility rates (ASFRs), natural log of Age specific death rates (ASDRs) and age distribution of population. The present indices have been developed using the statistical concept the index of qualitative variation (IQV) given in Chava and Anna (2011) "Social Statistics for Diverse Society." It is realised that this IQV helps in understanding the diversity taking place in the phenomena of fertility, mortality and overall population distribution over time. Data reported by the Sample Registration System (SRS) of India and its States over the years 1970s to 2010 has been used in understanding the inter-linkages among the above three phenomena. The indices seems to GIVE acceptable results and easy to compute and understand.

The paper deals with 3 topics: 1) Overview of existing sources of information on population. It covers databases: UN world population prospects, Eurostat, World health organization, Statistics Sweden, Institut National Etudes Démographiques, Human Mortality Database, and a series of others. The sources are analyzed using more than twenty quality criteria – user interface, list of countries and indicators covered, age groups of population, data formats and precision, periodicity of updating, etc. 2) Description of the Database of demographic indicators for countries of the world and regions of Russia under development at the Institute of Demography of the National Research University Higher School of Economics: the principles of data collection from different sources, methods of formation of the data cubes, metadata for these arrays, the set of indicators currently covered, the reference files for coding, ... 3) New features distinguishing this Database from another ones, examples of its use for specific data queries and modes of work. They display several know-how options, including formation of query result from the several sources specified by the user and elimination of erroneous values “on-the-fly”, recalculation of values of the indicator in the case of diverse units of measurement used in different sources.

A mixture probability density functions is proposed to model mortality data. We propose to model the deaths function (dx) rather than probability or rates, since the normalized dx function is a probability density function. In this way we expect to have a relatively goog fit with a low number of parameters. We fit the mixture model for a large variety of mortality pattern, showing that the model defined is flexible to have a good fit in many cases.

We introduce bi-variate and multivariate force of mortality functions. The pattern of mortality in a population is one of the strong influencing factors in determining the life expectancies at various ages in the population. Considering univariate functions of age only to understand the human mortality data without associating with other variables could lead to incomplete analysis. The reasons behind declining forces of mortality globally could be studied using the proposed functions.

Numerous studies show that high life expectancy is closely related to low life disparity. Unlike life expectancy, which can be increased by mortality decline at any age, averting deaths may either reduce or increase life disparity. Disparity can thus be decomposed into two opposite components, called compression and expansion, according to the effect of mortality decline on the age distribution of mortality. Conventional measures of disparity do not distinguish between the two components and inevitably provide misleading information on the equalization of life chances in a population. Based on the relevant properties of the change in disparity, we develop a new measure of disparity, the ratio of expansion to compression (REC), which can account for the relative importance of the two components. With this simple measure, we can obtain not only a clearer vision of the evolution of disparity, but also a consistent interpretation of the change in disparity related to mortality decline, just as we do with life expectancy. Empirical analysis shows the advantages of the new measure over conventional measures of disparity.

Background: To estimate and quantify spatial effects of childhood mortality using data from a household survey and accounting for the impact of conflict and other potential correlates in DRC.
Methods: Data on mortality of children from the DRC was available from a national representative cross-sectional household sample. Participants were 8,992 children under (U5) with 1005 observed deaths from the 2007 Demographic and Health Survey.
Results: The 30 percent decrease of under-five mortality observed between 2001 and 2007 masks large provincial variations and a north-east south divide due to the ongoing conflicts. The unadjusted analysis indicates that the overall risk of a child death is higher even in provinces not affected by conflicts. In multivariate analysis, higher odds of deaths were associated with shorter birth intervals ≤ 24 months [1.14 (1.04, 1.26)], children born at home [1.13 (1.01, 1.27)] or children living with a single mother [1.16 (1.03, 1.33)]. There were significant spatial variations showing high mortality risk by geographic location except for North Kivu.
Conclusion: The study provides evidence of high U5 mortality in DRC which is unexplained by the ongoing conflict and other factors considered. U5 mortality maps point to a lack of progress toward the Millennium Development Goal4.

Population movement and its impact on other social, economic and demographic characteristics have been increasing attention of social scientists and demographers in recent years and a large number of studies on migration have been conducted. The majority of studies used macro level approach by operating on highly aggregate data for countries, district, states and the nation as a whole. In recent years the study of migration at the micro-level is useful and it is governed by human grouping on probabilistic and stochastic approach. Households play a very important role in decision of an individual to move or not to move from the household. The main objective of the paper is to develop a probability model for the total number of migrants from a household. The suitability of the model is tested through observer data. A primary source of data has been used for this study. The area of the study is Varanasi district in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. Result suggests that the proposed model under consideration is a better approximation to observed distribution of rural out migration at the micro level. Thus it may be a useful tool in calculating the various probabilities connected with the out-migration from the household.

The work force participation rate of women is alarming when addressing the lack of labor force due to the aging population. Particularly in South Korea and in Japan, due to the exceptionally low fertility rate, it is an inevitable and urgent task to improve the labor market conditions surrounding females. Hence, for projecting the effects associated with the environmental change surrounding South Korean and Japanese females, an extended age-period-cohort model is fitted to the data on female labor force participation rates given by the age and period in South Korea and Japan. The results suggest that environmental changes surrounding females after 1980 indicate almost the same increasing trend for both countries.

The present study attempt to explore small area estimation techniques for estimation of Infant Mortality rate (IMR) at district level for the major state of India. Since many health data are unavailable at the district level, policymaker sometimes rely on state-level dataset to understand the health need at district level. District level data on births and deaths from Civil Registration System and Service Statistics are inadequate and not access able uniformly for all the districts. To meet the challenge for the need of district level indicators, the present study is an attempt to assess the data from the available sources and integrate them through small area estimation techniques to provide district level estimation infant mortality rate (IMR).The estimates of IMR by small area method provide robust result as evident from small gap from Sample Registration System (SRS) and National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) at state level. The concluding remark is small area estimation is good for estimating IMR at district level.