Population and development

In Ghana, a number of interventions have been implemented to ensure universal access to quality healthcare services and gender equity in healthcare access. One of these key interventions is the introduction of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in 2003 to ensure Ghanaians, especially women and children have access to good quality care. Notwithstanding these interventions, client experiences of quality care standards are still generally dissatisfactory. Previous studies explored client-perceived quality healthcare services in Ghana but not much has been investigated on gender differences in perceived quality care and implications on health insurance participation. This paper examined differences in the perceptions of women and men in quality of healthcare services in Ghana. A baseline survey was conducted in randomly selected 1,920 households in 16 rural and urban districts in two regions of Ghana. Data cleaning is completed and analysis ongoing. Logistic regression is conducted on the male and female sub-samples to ascertain whether there are differences in perceived service quality and how this influences (re)enrollment in health insurance. It is expected that the findings would inform policy makers in gender mainstreaming in quality improvement and participation in health insurance services.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are time-limited commitments made by governments throughout the world to reduce poverty and promote human development. The past two decades have witnessed significant improvements in the living conditions and health status of the world people, particularly the developing countries. The aim of this paper is to evaluate human development level in achieving MDG’s of 4 and 5 in the Western Africa countries and to explore its policy implications. Data used in this analysis are mostly taken from the WHO (World Health organization) for 2010, Population Reference Bureau for 2010 and Human Development Report (HDR) for 2006 and 2008. According to Roger’s theory on diffusion of Innovations which is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures in the complex atmosphere. With expansion advanced medical care systems, it is implied that we can see positive signs of reduction of mortality indices at the globalized World. Our result confirms it at the regional scale even with little progress in reduction of Child and Maternal Mortality rates. It involves evaluating possible solutions for human wellbeing at the World and Africa Continent as well by national and international authorities.

Greater Mumbai is most populated mega city in India. Paper examines the migration and employment condition in the Mumbai metropolitan area using census and survey data. The study provides information on changing pattern of employment and workforce in the city during last two decades. City has observed shift from manufacturing sector to tertiary sector. The migration has always played significant role in economic development which is declining. The differences in industrial and occupational profile of workers in terms of sex, age and migration are examined.
Liberalization and globalization policy of India has resulted in many changes in Indian economic scenario. Due to opening up Indian economy many industries could not cope up the competition with multinational companies. It has resulted in loss of employment in Mumbai as well as neighbouring areas. Nearly fifty per cent workers reported lack of work in enterprises, in area and closure as main reason for quitting of jobs. Another major change observed is the increase in the self employed workers as compared to regular wage and salaried jobs. Work participation rate declined by 5 percent for males while for females increased by 12 percent during 1961-2001. Economic Census (2005) indicate decline in employment in Mumbai.

Demographic advantage contributes a large share of economic growth. This study tries to find out how far the presence of demographic window in BRICS countries is affecting efficiently in the growth of their economies compared to few selected developed economies (Japan, UK and USA). It is seen in this study that the contribution of demographic component (growth of share of worker in population) in growth of per capita GDP is higher in BRICS countries (except Russian Federation) compared to that of the developed nations. This study also finds out that the speed of convergence to steady state equilibrium income for BRICS is faster than that of the eight countries (BRICS and three developed nations) together. Education has a positive effect on economic growth for eight country model. The effect of growth of working age population to population ratio on growth in per capita GDP is more in case of BRICS countries. This indicates the substantial effect of demographic component on economic growth of BRICS countries particularly for China, India and South Africa since they are still going through the demographic dividend phase of transition.

In 2009, the government of indonesia issued Law No. 52 regarding ‘Population and Family Development‘ which stipulates that population should become the center of all development policies and programs. Nevertheless, perceptions regarding the concept of population-centred development and the importance of population data for development planning differ among district governments. The aim of this paper is to identify the use of population data in the process of planning and policy-making at district level. This study uses qualitative approach. Data were collected in 2012 using in-depth interviews with government agencies officers and parliament members. It is revealed that the study areas have translated laws related to development planning into district regulations, however there are barriers in implementing the regulations. This study identifies several issues in the utilization of population data for planning and policy-making: dissemination and accessibility; data quality and reliability; and policymakers’ commitment and capacity to use population data in planning and policy-making. Recommendations of this study include: increase policymakers’ commitment and capacity to use population data through collaboration with Population Study Center at local universities; improving data quality and reliability; strengthening dialogue bet

Although there is wide agreement that the promotion of family planning lowers fertility, it is not clear to what extent greater contraceptive use and smaller family sizes will enhance investment in human capital and economic growth or what are the consequences of unwanted or unintended childbearing on children’s life chances.
We inform this debate by analyzing data on fertility intentions and children’s anthropometric measures collected as part of an on-going Demographic Surveillance Site (DSS) in Karonga District in Northern Malawi. We applied Propensity Score Matching to assess the effect of ‘unintendedness’ on child growth.
This study analyzes the effect of prospective fertility intentions on the nutritional status of the index child and the siblings of the index child after one and two years using both data on retrospective and prospective fertility intentions.

All the countries are developing at different rates & from differing historical levels of achievement. Such development with a view to meeting the socio-economic needs implies that man must use nature in the process of development. It is not that the life-style has changed altogether; the economy in the remote areas is still the same as it has been since the settlements started, but the areas enjoying accessibility to urban centres have already adopted a different character, as profoundly manifest in their day-to-day life.
The physical environment influences the type of economic activities especially so in backward areas of Darjeeling Hills. Rapid growth of population has become the most critical development constraint in Darjeeling Himalaya. Its economy is largely based on tea, agriculture & tourism, where the former has played a significant role in the development of the region since the beginning. It reveals from the study that the area under study proves to be a complicated region requiring considerable care & attention in the matter of intensive development.

Several cross-country and within-country studies have hypothesized that a U-shaped relationship exists between women’s economic activity and economic development. Female labour force participation tends to decline initially with economic development, plateaus at a certain stage of development before rising again. This is argued to be mainly a result of structural shifts in the economy, changing influence of income and substitution effects, and an increase in education levels of women in the population. In this paper we test this U-shaped hypothesis for India using state-level employment data spanning the last twenty five years, 1983-84 and 2009-10. We find no evidence to support the U hypothesis in the Indian context. This finding is especially relevant as researchers attempt to explain the systematic decline in female labour force participation.

This paper examines the relationship between household income shocks and fertility decisions. Using panel data from Tanzania, we estimate the impact of agricultural shocks on contraception use, pregnancy, and the likelihood of childbirth. To account for unobservable household characteristics that potentially affect both shocks and fertility decisions we employ a fixed effects model. Households significantly increase their contraception use in response to income shocks from crop loss. This comes from an increased use of both traditional contraceptive methods and modern contraceptives. The poorer the household the stronger the effect of income shock on contraceptive use is. Furthermore, pregnancies and childbirth are significantly delayed for households experiencing a crop shock. For both pregnancy and childbirth the likelihood of delay as a result of shocks increases the poorer the household. We argue that these changes in behavior are the result of deliberate decisions of the households rather than income shocks' effects on other factors that influence fertility, such as women's health status, the absence or migration of spouse, and dissolution of partnerships.

This paper aims to observe the effect of socioeconomic factors inherently on disable people related to the tendency of people with disability would become poor or not. The two socioeconomic factors are segregated into each variable, namely: a) Economic factor consisting of three: ‘access to business loans’, ‘jobs sector’ and ‘working hours’; whilst b) Social factor consisting of two: ‘access to courses (informal school)’ and ‘mean years schooling (average length of school)’. All those socioeconomic factors simultaneously determine the independent variables. The dependent variable is a result of classification (categorical data) whether the part or the whole socioeconomic factors (dependent variables) simultaneously make contribution and lead to the high tendency of disable people categorized being poor or not. The poor classification of population is accumulation of the two deciles out of the ten poor groups based on basic consumption approach. The main source of data for this study is the National Socio Economic Survey 2009 which this year focuses on the Social and Cultural Education in the questionnaire module and core questionnaire. The method of data processing and calculation is applying the logistic regression analysis with specific model on Forward Wald method to measure the odd ratio of individual characteristics.