The Influence of Acculturation on Breastfeeding Initiation and Duration for Mexican-Americans

This paper uses data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to test the hypotheses that (1) similar to other positive pre- and post-natal outcomes, Mexican immigrant mothers are more likely to breastfeed, and to breastfeed longer, than white or Mexican-American mothers; and (2) acculturation accounts for the ethnic/nativity differential in breastfeeding initiation and duration. The results support both hypotheses. Mexican immigrants to the U.S. are much more likely than whites to breastfeed, and to breastfeed longer. Mexican-American mothers, after controlling for background characteristics, have similar initiation and duration to whites. Using expanded acculturation measures developed for this paper, acculturation accounts for some of the difference between whites and Mexican immigrants in breastfeeding initiation, and much of the difference for breastfeeding duration. The results suggest that low levels of acculturation operate to protect Mexican immigrants from choosing to formula-feed, which gives their babies many health advantages, and may be associated with better health outcomes across the life course. The results also suggest that successive generations of Mexican immigrants may abandon breastfeeding, which is deleterious for their infants.     

Ethnic Classification in Global Perspective: A Cross-National Survey of the 2000 Census Round

Academic interest in official systems of racial and ethnic classification has grown in recent years, but most research on such census categories has been limited to small case studies or regional surveys. In contrast, this article analyzes a uniquely global data set compiled by the United Nations Statistical Division to survey the approaches to ethnic enumeration taken in 141 countries. The motives for this analysis combine theoretical, applied, and policy objectives. I find that 63% of the national censuses studied incorporate some form of ethnic enumeration, but their question and answer formats vary along several dimensions that betray diverse conceptualizations of ethnicity (for example, as “race” or “nationality”). Moreover, these formats follow notably regional patterns. Nonetheless, the variety of approaches can be grouped into a basic taxonomy of ethnic classification approaches, suggesting greater commonality in worldwide manifestations of the ethnicity concept than some have recognized.

Providing Spatial Data for Secondary Analysis: Issues and Current Practices Relating to Confidentiality

Spatially explicit data pose a series of opportunities and challenges for all the actors involved in providing data for long-term preservation and secondary analysis—the data producer, the data archive, and the data user. We report on opportunities and challenges for each of the three players, and then turn to a summary of current thinking about how best to prepare, archive, disseminate, and make use of social science data that have spatially explicit identification. The core issue that runs through the paper is the risk of the disclosure of the identity of respondents. If we know where they live, where they work, or where they own property, it is possible to find out who they are. Those involved in collecting, archiving, and using data need to be aware of the risks of disclosure and become familiar with best practices to avoid disclosures that will be harmful to respondents.

Feature selection based on distance correlation: a filter algorithm

Feature selection (FS) is one of the most powerful techniques to cope with the curse of dimensionality. In the study, a new filter approach to feature selection based on distance correlation is presented (DCFS, for short), which keeps the model-free advantage without any pre-specified parameters. Our method consists of two steps: hard step (forward selection) and soft step (backward selection). In the hard step, two types of associations, between univariate feature and the classes and between group feature and the classes, are involved to pick out the most relevant features with respect to the target classes. Due to the strict screening condition in the first step, some of the useful features are likely removed. Therefore, in the soft step, a feature-relationship gain (like feature score) based on the distance correlation is introduced, which is concerned with five kinds of associations. We sort the feature gain values and implement the backward selection procedure until the errors stop declining. The simulation results show that our method becomes more competitive on several datasets compared with some of the representative feature selection methods based on several classification models.     

福田内阁前途多舛

福田康夫2007年9月23日毫无悬念地当选为自民党第22任总裁,25日被国会推举为第91任首相并旋即组建新内阁。至此,因安信晋三首相9月12日突然辞职造成的政治真空得以填补,中断的临时国会恢复运转,一度陷入"山重水复"困境的日本政局似又转为"柳暗花明"。2006年曾以高龄为由退出自民党总裁竞选、本以为再也无望问鼎首     

向"中国人口崩溃论者"进一言

我在美国逛书店时,随处见到两本书:一本《中国威胁论》;一本《中国崩溃论》.我叹服某些国外人士的直爽,他们总是把心里感觉的和希望的东西直言不讳地讲出来.     

河南省农村育龄妇女知情选择能力及其影响因素分析

根据中国避孕节育优质服务工程办公室2005年发布的避孕节育知情选择规范,在我国,避孕节育知情选择是指通过广泛深入的宣传教育,让广大育龄群众了解国家人口状况和有关政策;通过培训和咨询,把多种常用的避孕方法介绍给群众,使群众知道各种避孕方法的避孕原理、使用方法、优缺点和可能遇到的问题及注意事项;群众根据自身的健康与生育状况自愿选择适合自身特点的、安全有效的避孕方法;在避孕方法选择的过程中,技术服务人员应给予必要的技术指导和帮助,从而有效地实现避孕节育目的.     

论计划生育村民自治

建立健全“依法管理、村(居)民自治、优质服务、政策推动、综合治理”的长效工作机制,是《中共中央国务院关于全面加强人口和计划生育工作统筹解决人口问题的决定》(2006)对我国未来计划生育管理提出的基本要求,也是全国部分地区在人口和计划生育综合改革实践中探索出的一条基本经验。然而,对长效工作机制中的“村民自治”,人们在认识上还存在一些误区,从而导致了工作实践中的一些偏差。本文拟就计划生育村民自治中的几个基本问题谈点意见。1计划生育村民自治的概念村民自治是我国广大人民群众直接行使民主权利的一项基本社会政治制度。“计…     

我国城市化发展的区域差异及协调发展对策

中国城市化发展具有极为显著的区域差异。文章根据多元数据比较系统地阐述了我国城市化发展的省际差异特征,剖析了其形成因素;对我国未来区域城市化的发展趋势及存在的问题进行了前瞻性分析,并有针对性地提出了促进我国区域城市化协调发展的对策与措施。     

基本养老保险覆盖面扩展决定因素实证研究

扩大基本养老保险覆盖面是我国社会保障制度改革的优先目标之一。本文通过对19982003年分省数据的实证分析,发现各省之间的基本养老保险覆盖面的差异,主要是由它们的经济发展水平和市场化程度这两个宏观经济因素与基本养老金给付标准和财政对社会保障补助支出这两个政策因素共同决定的。基于这些发现,考虑到我国经济持续发展和市场化改革深化的趋势,我们对我国社会保障事业的发展持谨慎乐观的态度,并认为在目前,“低水平、高覆盖”仍然是一个符合国情、必须坚持的合理政策选择,地方政府应当在财力许可的范围内,增加对社会保障事业的财政投入。