Changes in the Living Arrangements of Elderly People in Greece: 1974–1999

During the period 1974–1999 two contrasting trends were observed with respect to the living arrangements of older people in Greece. On the one hand the proportion of older people living with their unmarried children had been slightly rising while on the other hand the proportion of older people living with their married children declined substantially. As a result of the declining trend in the incidence of co-residence with married children the percentage of older people living with their children or other members of their extended family fell by 25% points (from a 58% in 1974 to about 33% in 1999). Our analysis suggests that the main driving force behind the decrease in co-residence between older people and their married children was the rise in the incomes of older people (which resulted from some important exogenous policy changes which increased substantially pension incomes). On the other hand, the main driving force behind the slight increase in the co-residence with unmarried children was the increase in the percentage of unmarried younger people (which is associated with the postponement in the age of marriage) and the high and in some cases increasing needs of children’s generation.     

Demographic Transitions and Changes in the Living Arrangements of Children: The Netherlands 1850–2010

The transformation of Europe’s demographic regime over the past two centuries has led to considerable changes in the living arrangements of children. We study long-term changes, making use of three datasets covering the living arrangements of children born between 1850 and 1993 in the Netherlands: a historical national sample of children born between 1850 and 1922, a retrospective survey covering children born between 1923 and 1985, and data from the national population registry relating to children born between 1986 and 1993. We describe the changes in terms of whether fathers, mothers, and stepparents lived with these children at birth and at age 15. We observe a massive increase in the percentage of children growing up in a complete family between the 1850–1879 cohort and the mid-twentieth century cohorts and a return to nineteenth-century conditions in the most recent birth cohort. Time spent in a complete family increased continuously from the mid-nineteenth century on, to decrease again from the 1960s on.     

Identifying the Confounders of Marginalization and Mortality in Mexico, 2003–2007

Social Indicators Research - Confounders alter any predicted outcome by modifying the relationship between cause and consequence. Confounders can appear in different proportions inside a population...     

A Cross-National Analysis of Lifespan Inequality, 1950–2015: Examining the Distribution of Mortality Within Countries

Cross-national health research devotes considerable attention to lifespan and survival rate disparities that are found between countries. However, the distribution of mortality across the world is shaped mostly by what happens within countries. We address this striking gap in the literature by modeling length-of-life inequality for individual nation-states. We use life tables from the United Nation’s (2015) World Population Prospects to estimate inequality levels for 200 countries across 13 waves between 1950 and 2015. We find that lifespan inequality is steadily declining across the world, but that each country’s level of inequality, and the rate at which it declines, vary considerably. Our models account for more than 90% of the longitudinal and cross-sectional variation in country-level lifespan inequality during the 1990–2015 period. Maternal mortality is the strongest predictor in our model, while disease prevalence, access to safe water, and health interventions figure prominently, as well. Gross domestic product per capita shows the expected curvilinear association with lifespan inequality, while primary education (both overall enrollment and gender equity in enrollment), external debt, and migration also play critical roles in shaping health outcomes. By contrast, the distribution of political and economic resources (i.e., democracy and income inequality) is less important.

     

Famine,Disease, and Mortality Patterns in the Parish of Borshevka,Russia, 1830–1912

Scholars have projected a dismal image of nineteenth-century, rural Russia as a society repeatedly punctuated by crop failures, famine, starvation, and epidemics of famine-related diseases. But there has been no rigorous attempt, using appropriate methods, to assess the nature of demographic crises in Russia and their contribution to overall mortality and population growth. The pattern of mortality evident in the parish under examination is distinguished by an extremely high incidence of infant, diarrhoeal diseases and childhood, infectious diseases. This unfavourable disease environment and resulting high rates of infant and early childhood mortality were more closely related to fertility levels, household size, housing conditions, and weaning practices than to annual or seasonal food availability and the nutritional status of the population. In a disease-driven society, the susceptibility to infection and the force of infection can, to a considerable extent, be determined by demographic factors, familial norms, and climatic constraints.     

Forecasting the Population of Census Tracts by Age and Sex: An Example of the Hamilton–Perry Method in Action

Small area population projections are useful in a range of business applications. This paper uses a case study to show how this type of task can be accomplished by using the Hamilton–Perry method, which is a variant of the cohort-component projection technique. We provide the documentation on the methods, data, and assumptions used to develop two sets of population projections for census tracts in Clark County, Nevada, and discuss specific factors needed to accomplish this task, including the need to bring expert judgment to bear on the task. Our experience suggests that the Hamilton–Perry Method is an important tool and we advise considering it for small forecasting needs in the private sector.     

The Changing Shape of Soviet Mortality, 1958–1985: An Evaluation of Old and New Evidence

Changes in mortality in the Soviet Union have attracted the attention of both scholars and the popular media. After a hiatus of more than ten years, the government of the Soviet Union has released data on mortality for the 1980s, which allow assessment of recent changes. The new life table for 1984–85 shows that mortality of Soviet females has improved at ages below 45 and deteriorated above that age since the last age-specific mortality data were published in the early 1970s, while mortality of males has improved at ages below 25 and deteriorated above that age. At the same time, the official mortality rates for persons aged 60 and over in 1958–59, 1968–71, and 1984–85 are implausibly low. Poor-quality data at the older ages, particularly in rural areas and the less developed regions of the country, contributed to these low mortality rates of the old. As data quality has improved with time, the reported mortality rates at old ages have increased. Adjustment of the official data for error, especially above age 60, shows that whereas the reported value of e₀ for males fell by 1.5 years between 1958–59 and 1984–85, the actual value probably fell by no more than 0.5 years; the corresponding figures for females were a reported rise of one year, and an actual rise of at least two years. Examination of these Soviet data illustrates how important consideration of error in mortality statistics of the old can be in understanding mortality trends.     

Which Aspects of Elderly Living Conditions are Important to Predict Mortality? The Complex Role of Family Ties at Home and in Institutions

Social Indicators Research - Besides health and socio-economic status, the social relationships maintained during elderly play an important role in shaping the living conditions at older ages. In...     

Household Composition,Extended Kinship,and Reproduction in Taiwan: 1965–1985

Co-residence of a married couple with the husband's parents continues to be an important aspect of family life in Taiwan. This form of household extension continues despite Taiwan's industrialization and convergence with a Western model of consumption, and despite the increase in the prevalence of nuclear households over the past twenty years. Increases in nuclear units are associated primarily with declines in proportions living in households that are extended both laterally and across generations, while the percentage living with a parent in a stem household has declined only modestly since 1973. In all, declines in co-residence notwithstanding, in 1985 nearly half the respondents resided in extended units. In 1985, as in 1980, a history of residence in an extended household was related to more traditional reproductive behaviour.     

Assessing Changes in Household Socioeconomic Status in Rural South Africa, 2001–2013: A Distributional Analysis Using Household Asset Indicators

Understanding the distribution of socioeconomic status (SES) and its temporal dynamics within a population is critical to ensure that policies and interventions adequately and equitably contribute to the well-being and life chances of all individuals. This study assesses the dynamics of SES in a typical rural South African setting over the period 2001–2013 using data on household assets from the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System. Three SES indices, an absolute index, principal component analysis index and multiple correspondence analysis index, are constructed from the household asset indicators. Relative distribution methods are then applied to the indices to assess changes over time in the distribution of SES with special focus on location and shape shifts. Results show that the proportion of households that own assets associated with greater modern wealth has substantially increased over time. In addition, relative distributions in all three indices show that the median SES index value has shifted up and the distribution has become less polarized and is converging towards the middle. However, the convergence is larger from the upper tail than from the lower tail, which suggests that the improvement in SES has been slower for poorer households. The results also show persistent ethnic differences in SES with households of former Mozambican refugees being at a disadvantage. From a methodological perspective, the study findings demonstrate the comparability of the easy-to-compute absolute index to other SES indices constructed using more advanced statistical techniques in assessing household SES.     

Socio-economic Differentials in Infant and Child Mortality during Mortality Decline: England and Wales, 1890–1911

In this paper data from the 1911 Census of the Fertility of Marriage of England and Wales are used to study patterns of mortality decline by socio-economic characteristics, principally the occupation of husband. That census reported data on number of wives, children ever born, and children dead by marriage-duration cohorts for 190 non-overlapping occupations of husband. These results, along with those on number of rooms in the dwelling of the family are used to make indirect estimates of childhood mortality using the techniques described in United Nations, Manual X. These procedures produce values of q(a), the probability of dying before reaching some exact age ‘a’. Estimates for q(2), q(3), q(5), q(10), q(15), and q(20) are derived from data on women married 0–4, 5–9, 10–14, 15–19, 20–24, and 25–29 years, respectively. These estimates can also be dated to a point in the past. These values can also be converted to a corresponding level of a Model West life table, which describes the ‘average’ mortality regime which the children of those women experienced. This furnishes a basis to look at mortality decline for various social classes and occupational groups. Ordinary least squares regressions of the levels of Model West life tables implied by the 1(a) values on time give one measure of mortality decline. Another is the absolute amount of the increase in the level of the Model West life tables from marriage-duration cohort 20–24 years to 0–4 years. The aggregate results indicate that social class in England and Wales during the 1890s and 1900s tended to be related to the speed of mortality decline: childhood mortality declined more rapidly in the higher and more privileged social class groups. But the results were neither nearly as strong nor as regular as those which predicted the level of mortality within any marriage-duration cohort. These outcomes are not particularly sensitive to the three different social-class stratification schemes used: the 1911 English Registrar General's classification; the 1951 English Registrar General's classification; and the 1950 U.S. Census classification. There was also a fairly regular and predictable gradient for the number of rooms in the home: child mortality was higher in families who lived in larger dwellings. Analysis of 190 detailed male occupational groups revealed that considerably more of the variation in mortality levels than of trends could be explained by social-class categories. Between 20 and 40 per cent of variation in mortality trend could be accounted for by social class alone, as opposed to 50 to 80 per cent of mortality levels for different marriage-duration cohorts. Results for a more restricted sample of 116 occupations for which income estimates could be made revealed a similar pattern. In addition, income was virtually unrelated to the pattern of mortality decline, and improvement was more rapid in groups who were more urban. This reflects the role of rapidly improving urban sanitation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in England. In contrast, income was significantly related to childhood morality levels for various marriage-duration cohorts (with higher income associated with lower mortality), while urbanization was inversely correlated with mortality levels (more urban groups experienced higher mortality). Overall, social class (or occupation group), income, and urbanization were more successful in explaining mortality levels than time trends across occupations, although social class and the extent of urbanization did reasonably well in accounting for trends. Over a longer period, the transition in child mortality was under way by the 1890s, but its pace and timing varied in different occupations and social class groupings. Although absolute differences in infant mortality were reduced after about 1911, relative inequality persisted even as infant and child survival improved for all groups.     

What Explains the Rural-Urban Gap in Infant Mortality: Household or Community Characteristics?

The rural-urban gap in infant mortality rates is explained by using a new decomposition method that permits identification of the contribution of unobserved heterogeneity at the household and the community level. Using Demographic and Health Survey data for six Francophone countries in Central and West sub-Saharan Africa, we find that differences in the distributions of factors that determine mortality-not differences in their effects-explain almost the entire gap. Higher infant mortality rates in rural areas mainly derive from the rural disadvantage in household characteristics, both observed and unobserved, which explain two-thirds of the gap. Among the observed characteristics, environmental factors-a safe source of drinking water, electricity, and quality of housing materials-are the most important contributors. Community characteristics explain less than onequarter of the gap, with about two-thirds of this coming from community unobserved heterogeneity and one-third from the existence of a health facility within the community. The effect of disadvantageous environmental conditions-such as limited electricity and water supply-derives both from a lack of community-level infrastructure and from the inability of some households to exploit it when available. Policy needs to operate at both the community and household levels to correct such deficiencies.     

Marital Fertility Decline in the Netherlands: Child Mortality, Real Wages, and Unemployment, 1860–1939

Previous studies of the fertility decline in Europe are often limited to an earlier stage of the marital fertility decline, when the decline tended to be slower and before the large increase in earnings in the 1920s. Starting in 1860 (before the onset of the decline), this study follows marital fertility trends until 1939, when fertility reached lower levels than ever before. Using data from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN), this study shows that mortality decline, a rise in real income, and unemployment account for the decline in the Netherlands. This finding suggests that marital fertility decline was an adjustment to social and economic change, leaving little room for attitudinal change that is independent of social and economic change.     

Disentangling the Circularity in Sen’s Capability Approach: An Analysis of the Co-Evolution of Functioning Achievement and Resources

There is an ambiguity in Amartya Sen’s capability approach as to what constitutes an individual’s resources, conversion factors and valuable functionings. What we here call the “circularity problem” points to the fact that all three concepts seem to be mutually endogenous and interdependent. To econometrically account for this entanglement we suggest a panel vector autoregression approach. We analyze the intertemporal interplay of the above factors over a time horizon of 15 years using the BHPS data set for Great Britain, measuring individual well-being in functionings space with a set of basic functionings, comprising “being happy”, “being healthy”, “being nourished”, “moving about freely”, “being well-sheltered” and “having satisfying social relations”. We find that there are indeed functionings that are resources for many other functionings (viz. “being happy”) while other functionings (“being well-sheltered” and “having satisfying social relations”) are by and large independent, thus shedding light on a facet of the capability approach that has been neglected so far.     

The Ratio of the Elderly to the Working-age Population in Japan,Singapore and Thailand

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Black–White Disparities in Adult Mortality: Implications of Differential Record Linkage for Understanding the Mortality Crossover

Mortality rates among black individuals exceed those of white individuals throughout much of the life course. The black–white disparity in mortality rates is widest in young adulthood, and then rates converge with increasing age until a crossover occurs at about age 85 years, after which black older adults exhibit a lower mortality rate relative to white older adults. Data quality issues in survey-linked mortality studies may hinder accurate estimation of this disparity and may even be responsible for the observed black–white mortality crossover, especially if the linkage of surveys to death records during mortality follow-up is less accurate for black older adults. This study assesses black–white differences in the linkage of the 1986–2009 National Health Interview Survey to the National Death Index through 2011 and the implications of racial/ethnic differences in record linkage for mortality disparity estimates. Match class and match score (i.e., indicators of linkage quality) differ by race/ethnicity, with black adults exhibiting less certain matches than white adults in all age groups. The magnitude of the black–white mortality disparity varies with alternative linkage scenarios, but convergence and crossover continue to be observed in each case. Beyond black–white differences in linkage quality, this study also identifies declines over time in linkage quality and even eligibility for linkage among all adults. Although linkage quality is lower among black adults than white adults, differential record linkage does not account for the black–white mortality crossover.     

The Dynamics of Welfare Opinions in Changing Economic, Institutional and Political Contexts: An Empirical Analysis of Dutch Deservingness Opinions, 1975–2006

Long-term trends in deservingness opinions and how these fluctuate in relation to changes in the economic, institutional and political contexts have not often been examined. In this paper, we address these trend questions by analyzing 22 waves of the repeated cross-sectional Cultural Change in The Netherlands (CCN, 1975–2006) survey. Our analyses show fairly stable public deservingness opinions regarding five different needy groups over the long term. Over the short term, opinions fluctuate more. Explanatory analyses show that economic and political factors, but not institutional factors, are especially influential over fluctuations in opinions. When real GDP grows, the Dutch public is more likely to consider the disabled, the elderly and social assistance beneficiaries deserving of more welfare support. In addition, when unemployment rises, the unemployed and social assistance beneficiaries are more likely to be seen as deserving of more support. Finally, when the national political climate is more leftist, most needy groups are considered to be deserving of more welfare support.     

The Standard of Living of the Workers in a Spanish Industrial Town: Wages,Nutrition, Life Expentancy and Heigth in Alcoy (1870–1930)

This is the first study that empirically examines how migration influences migrants’ time use patterns in China, utilizing a mixed-method approach. We systematically estimate the migration effects on weekly hours on working, leisure, personal care and domestic responsibilities, based on data from the nationally representative 2010 Chinese Family Panel Studies. We then supplement these analyses with in-depth interviews conducted in Beijing to further understand the underlying mechanisms. Compared with urban locals, rural-to-urban migrants have longer work hours and less leisure time. The largest differences are found among men. On average, migrant men work 5 h longer and have 7 fewer hours of leisure per week than urban local men. These differences are moderated by migrants’ and their parents’ socioeconomic status, and their family responsibilities. The in-depth interviews reveal that the busier work schedules are largely motivated by the transient nature of most rural-to-urban migration and the overwhelming economic pressures for household establishment and career development.     

A Comparison of the Percentages of theOld-old and theYoung-old Elderly in Selected Countries

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