Analysis of Contingency Tables with Clustered Observations

A new approach is presented for testing independence in contingency tables with clustered observations. The approach is based on the framework of generalized linear mixed models. Under the multinomial logistic link function, the category counts are modelled with random cluster effects and a modified likelihood ratio statistic is used for testing independence. The method is applicable to multi-way tables, and can accommodate multiple levels of clustering. It is illustrated using a benchmark dataset.     

Immigration Through Marriage: A Case Study of Bangladeshis in Toronto

People living in developing countries want to migrate to developed countries because of increasing economic disparities. They are attracted to migrate because of material affluence, economic prosperity and political stability of the developed world. Canadian immigration laws restrict immigration for people of different social classes in developing countries like Bangladesh and, therefore, it becomes attractive for both Bangladeshi men and women to migrate to Canada through marriage. How restrictive is the Canadian immigration policy in limiting international migration? How does individuals’ immigration or citizenship status in Canada transform them into desirable brides or grooms? What are the expectations of immigrant brides and grooms? How is marriage used as a strategy to immigrate to Canada? I focus on Bangladeshi immigration to Canada and argue that both Bangladeshi men and women are interested to migrate to Canada through marriage due to restrictive Canadian immigration policies.     

Intra-uterine Mortality and Maternal Nutritional Status in Rural Bangladesh

This paper is an investigation of the relationship of a maternal nutritional status with intra-uterine mortality in a population of chronically malnourished rural Bangladeshi women. First, life-table techniques are used to compare the level of intra-uterine mortality in this population with levels reported in other studies. Then the relationships of maternal nutritional status, age, parity, foetal loss and season of conception with intra-uterine mortality are examined in a multivariate analysis. The results indicate foetal mortality in rural Bangladesh to be markedly higher than in other populations where living conditions and health care are superior. Maternal nutritional status, maternal age and season of conception all appear to be related significantly to foetal mortality.     

A New Perspective on Violent Crime Burden Index: Evidence from Indian Districts

Given limited resource availability in a developing nation like India, faced with high incidences of crime, it is important to optimize on the resources spent in combating crime by channelling them to proper direction. This requires an understanding of the actual and overall level of crime across India. Our paper provides a complete understanding of the various indicators of violent crime and the determinants of these crimes in India using district level data for three census years, namely, 1981, 1991 and 2001. We construct three alternative crime-burden indices. Including a variable like voter turnout in state election at the district level, we document significant impact of public awareness to reduce and combat crime. The constructed crime burden index shows that states located in northern parts of India have more incidences of crime compared to states in the south. We also find that our estimated crime-burden indices tend to report in general a higher level of crime-burden than the average based index. This suggests controlling for the factors beyond population while constructing the aggregate crime-burden index for any country is essential. Our work although is limited to the Indian data, we however, believe that this can be easily applied to various other countries.     

Growth Effects of Remittances in Bangladesh: Is there a U‐shaped Relationship?

This article shows that the effect of remittances on economic growth involves a U‐shaped pattern, which is negative initially but later becomes positive. The analysis differs significantly from earlier studies in that it examines important methodological issues on the specification and estimation of the long‐run growth effects of remittances by estimating their impact on total factor productivity (TFP) rather than on the growth rate of GDP, using time series data from Bangladesh. The use of single‐equation cointegration methods shows that remittances’ effect on long‐run growth in Bangladesh is negative and falling until the remittances‐to‐GDP ratio is roughly eight per cent. The benefits of remittances receipts outweigh their costs and their net effects start to become positive when the ratio exceeds 14 per cent.     

Application of a Risk Analysis Tool to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) Outbreak in Saudi Arabia

The Grunow–Finke assessment tool (GFT) is an accepted scoring system for determining likelihood of an outbreak being unnatural in origin. Considering its high specificity but low sensitivity, a modified Grunow–Finke tool (mGFT) has been developed with improved sensitivity. The mGFT has been validated against some past disease outbreaks, but it has not been applied to ongoing outbreaks. This study is aimed to score the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in Saudi Arabia using both the original GFT and mGFT. The publicly available data on human cases of MERS-CoV infections reported in Saudi Arabia (2012–2018) were sourced from the FluTrackers, World Health Organization, Saudi Ministry of Health, and published literature associated with MERS outbreaks investigations. The risk assessment of MERS-CoV in Saudi Arabia was analyzed using the original GFT and mGFT criteria, algorithms, and thresholds. The scoring points for each criterion were determined by three researchers to minimize the subjectivity. The results showed 40 points of total possible 54 points using the original GFT (likelihood: 74%), and 40 points of a total possible 60 points (likelihood: 67%) using the mGFT, both tools indicating a high likelihood that human MERS-CoV in Saudi Arabia is unnatural in origin. The findings simply flag unusual patterns in this outbreak, but do not prove unnatural etiology. Proof of bioattacks can only be obtained by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This study demonstrated the value and flexibility of the mGFT in assessing and predicting the risk for an ongoing outbreak with simple criteria.     

Fertility and socio-economic status in Rural Bangladesh: Differentials and linkages

Summary Socio-economic differentials in fertility are examined by using data collected from a daily registration system covering over 100,000 persons in rural Bangladesh during the period 1968 to 1970. The findings indicate that fertility was generally higher among women in the higher than in the lower socio-economic groups. Several factors associated with high socio-economic status and their relation with the intermediate variables are discussed as providing the linkages with high fertility. These include, health status, breastfeeding, the enforcement of 'purdah' and migration.     

Seasonal Patterns of Reproduction in Matlab,Bangladesh

In Bangladesh twice as many births occur in December as in July. This paper examines the seasonal patterns of the risks of conception, fetal loss and return of menses post partum in a longitudinal study of 2,300 women in 14 villages of Matlab, Bangladesh. Life tables were estimated for each month of entry event and then ‘period’ life tables were constructed with the risks for a given calendar month. Confirming the results of earlier studies, risks of resumption of menses were higher in November and December, regardless of time elapsed since the last birth. Similarly, there are increased conception risks in the period from February to April for all fecundable women. The time of lowest fetal loss and stillbirth risks is in the cool season, though this variation makes only a minor contribution to the overall seasonality of births. The pattern of fecundability estimated from data on coital frequency did not match the pattern estimated from reported conceptions; these discrepancies imply possible seasonal changes in other parameters of fecundability besides intercourse.