Women's status and family planning in Haiti

"The paper argues that women's status in Haiti is a factor favorable to the spread of modern contraception and a potential rapid demographic transition from high to low fertility. After briefly reviewing recent theories on the determining of fertility declines, the paper considers women's status in Haiti. It discusses family patterns, conjugal unions, and economic activities. Finally, it reviews current patterns of contraceptive use and considers how these are related to various aspects of women's status."     

Transportation Difficulty of Black and White Rural Older Adults

The purpose of this study was to understand self-reported transportation difficulty among rural older adults. We used data from the UAB Study of Aging (255 Black and 259 White), community-dwelling participants residing in rural areas. We examined the relationship of predisposing characteristics, enabling resources, and measures of need for care with self-reports of transportation difficulty. Blacks reported having more transportation difficulty than Whites (24.7% vs. 11.6%; p ≤ .05). When we introduced other variables, race differences disappeared, but there was a race by income interaction with transportation difficulty. Whites with lower incomes were more likely to have transportation difficulty than Whites with higher incomes. When data from Blacks and Whites were analyzed separately, income was the only variable associated with transportation difficulty among Whites. Among Blacks, income was not related to transportation difficulty but several variables other than income (age, gender, marital status, MMSE scores and depression) were.     

Exchange rate regimes and the cross-country distribution of the 1997 financial crisis

We study variations in the severity of the 1997 financial crisis in a sample of 25 developing countries. We use both currency depreciation and stock market returns as crisis measures. Our key findings are that countries that started 1997 with an exchange rate peg experienced significantly greater currency depreciation and significantly lower stock returns than would be predicted from the levels of various macroeconomic indicators.     

Role-Taking Accuracy in Medical Encounters: A Test of two Theories

Abstract

This paper tests five hypotheses derived from two contrasting theoretical perspectives on role-taking accuracy: a social contact theory and an institutional resource theory. We investigate how well doctors and patients perceive one another's perspectives in a medical encounter. The cumulative weight of the data supports the proposed social contact theory. Increased contact between residents and patients, as reflected in physician's year in residency, contributes to more accurate role-taking on the part of physicians. Conditions of social compatibility between doctors and patients vis a vis gender or race lead to more accurate role-taking. Finally, personal characteristics are better predictors of role-taking accuracy than institutional status variables such as type of residency training program or doctor's year in residency status.     

Family patterns,women's status and fertility in the Middle East and North Africa

Currently, countries in the Middle East and North Africa are in the process of changing from high to low mortality and fertility, and the present paper reviews and assesses the current state of the social science research on family patterns and women's status in these regions. In particular, it reviews literature on: 1) marriage patterns; 2) the extended family and relations internal to the family; 3) larger kinship structures; 4) the role and status of women in the larger society; and 5) divorce, widowhood, and remarriage. The author, however, believes that much of the research on family patterns lacks concern with the impact of basic structural changes in the economic and social organization of countries in the region. He concludes by offering a few suggestions about areas where research linking population dynamics with family patterns and the status of women could be usefully undertaken.     

Fertility, mortality, migration and family planning in the Yemen Arab Republic

Abstract Until the end of the seven years' civil war following the revolution of 1962, almost no reliable statistical information of any kind about the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) and its people was available. Since President al-Hamdi's takeover of 1974, the demand for more accurate statistics for developing planning has led to a number of studies which give us the first numerical insights into the dynamics of the Yemen's population. The National Population Census of 1975 is the most important of these studies since it showed two things very clearly. First, it indicated that the Yemen's population is large and concentrated in selected rural areas where there are real problems of crowding and shortages of good agricultural land. Secondly, the Census showed that the lack of domestic economic opportunities partially related to the high rural population densities, and the numerous opportunities in the oil-rich states of the Middle East, especially Sa'udi Arabia, had resulted in an out-migration of young males of prime ages of very large proportions. This article elaborates further on the dynamics of the population in Yemen and reports on the results of a small sample survey carried out in May 1976which provides further insights into the factors affecting fertility and mortality during this early stage of the Yemen's economic and social development.     

Parameter identifiability in a class of random graph mixture models

We prove identifiability of parameters for a broad class of random graph mixture models. These models are characterized by a partition of the set of graph nodes into latent (unobservable) groups. The connectivities between nodes are independent random variables when conditioned on the groups of the nodes being connected. In the binary random graph case, in which edges are either present or absent, these models are known as stochastic blockmodels and have been widely used in the social sciences and, more recently, in biology. Their generalizations to weighted random graphs, either in parametric or non-parametric form, are also of interest. Despite these many applications, the parameter identifiability issue for such models has only been touched upon in the literature. We give here a thorough investigation of this problem. Our work also has consequences for parameter estimation. In particular, the estimation procedure proposed by Frank and Harary for binary affiliation models is revisited in this article.     

The feminization of bereavement among community-dwelling older adults

We examined gender differences in frequency and sociodemographic predictors of spousal, non-spousal family, and friendship bereavement events among community-dwelling older adults using data from the UAB Study of Aging. Analysis involved a 30-month observation period of 893 subjects. There were significant differences between women and men for all types of loss. Significant differences were also found in the sociodemographic predictors of loss between and within gender categories. This study revealed the extent to which older women disproportionately bear the burden of loss and points to the need for greater attention to bereavement as a women's issue.     

Visual acuity's association with levels of leisure-time physical activity in community-dwelling older adults

Little is known about the effect of reduced vision on physical activity in older adults. This study evaluates the association of visual acuity level, self-reported vision, and ocular disease conditions with leisure-time physical activity and calculated caloric expenditure. A cross-sectional study of 911 subjects 65 yr and older from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Study of Aging (SOA) cohort was conducted evaluating the association of vision-related variables to weekly kilocalorie expenditure calculated from the 17-item Leisure Time Physical Activity Questionnaire. Ordinal logistic regression was used to evaluate possible associations while controlling for potential confounders. In multivariate analyses, each lower step in visual acuity below 20/50 was significantly associated with reduced odds of having a higher level of physical activity, OR 0.81, 95% CI 0.67, 0.97. Reduced visual acuity appears to be independently associated with lower levels of physical activity among community-dwelling adults.