Estimating unmet need for contraception by district within Ghana: an application of small-area estimation techniques

The importance of meeting the unmet need for contraception is nowhere more urgent than in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, where the fertility decline is stalling and total unmet need exceeds 30 per cent among married women. In Ghana, where fertility levels vary considerably, demographic information at sub-national level is essential for building effective family planning programmes. We used small-area estimation techniques, linking data from the 2003 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey to the 2000 Ghana Population and Housing Census, to derive district-level estimates of contraceptive use and unmet need for contraception. The results show considerable variation between districts in contraceptive use and unmet need. The prevalence of contraceptive use varies from 4.1 to 41.7 per cent, while that of the use of modern methods varies from 4.0 to 34.8 per cent. The findings identify districts where family planning programmes need to be strengthened.     

《敦煌佛教绘画》前言

《敦煌佛教绘画》的前言介绍了敦煌第一石窟开凿的缘起、过程以及敦煌艺术的分期。全文探讨了华严与敦煌的关系,并以一些造像中手印的区域性特点为例提出研究印度国家博物馆馆藏敦煌绘画艺术的必要性和重要性。     

Inventory management with variable lead-time dependent procurement cost

A reduction in the inventory replenishment lead-time allows reducing safety stock requirements and improving customer service. However, it might be accompanied by increased procurement costs because of premium charges imposed by suppliers, or higher transportation costs. This paper studies a single-stage variable lead-time inventory system with lead-time dependent procurement cost. Selection of the lead-time value represents finding the trade-off between benefits of lead-time reduction and increase in the procurement cost. A model for joint optimization of inventory and procurement costs is developed. Numerical studies are conducted to identify conditions under which lead-time reduction is favorable compared to procuring at the lowest cost.     

Properties of the mixed regression estimator when disturbances are not necessarily normal

Small-disturbance approximations for the bias vector and mean squared error matrix of the mixed regression estimator for the coefficients in a linear regression model are derived and efficiency with respect to least squares estimator is examined.     

Societal Gender Inequality as Moderator of the Relationship Between Work–Life Fit and Subjective Well-Being: A Multilevel Analysis Across European Countries

Social Indicators Research - Social well-being of person who works in social services as well as hospital staff has a large effect on care quality and organizational efficiency. The aim of this...     

The Archives Made Me Do It

Qualitative Sociology - This paper is a reflection on the power of archives in driving research. Just as much as informants draw the attention of researchers to social patterns, archives do, too....     

Role of flexibility in supply chain design and modeling—Introduction to the special issue

In this introductory note, we describe the motivation behind this special issue on supply chain design and modeling. We begin by noting the potential opportunities offered by flexibility of a system in enhancing its functionalities and capabilities. After defining the nature of flexibility, we briefly describe flexibility in a supply chain, pertinent issues, and potential tools and techniques utilized for designing and modeling flexibility in it. We close out with a brief review of the articles in this issue and their relevance to the interests of decision makers.     

Estimation of Disaggregate-Level Poverty Incidence in Odisha Under Area-Level Hierarchical Bayes Small Area Model

Sustainable development goal-1 of the United Nations is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. The estimates of poverty related parameters obtained from large scale sample survey are often available at large domain level (e.g. state level). But, poverty rates are not uniformly distributed across the regions. The regional variations are masked in such large domain level estimates. However, for monitoring the progress of poverty alleviation programmes aimed at reduction of poverty often require micro or disaggregate level estimates. The traditional survey estimation approaches are not suitable for generating the reliable estimates at this level because of sample size problem. It is the main endeavor of Small Area Estimation (SAE) approach to produce micro level statistics with acceptable precision without incurring any extra cost and utilizing existing survey data. In this study, the Hierarchical Bayes approach of SAE has been applied to generate reliable and representative district level poverty incidence for the State of Odisha in India using the Household Consumer Expenditure Survey 2011–2012 data of National Sample Survey Office and linked with Population Census 2011. The results show the precise performance of model based estimates generated by SAE method to a greater extent than the direct survey estimates. A poverty map has also been produced to observe the spatial inequality in poverty distribution.