How useful are the demographic surveys in explaining the determinants of early marriage of girls in the Terai of Nepal?

In recent decades significant changes in Nepalese society have greatly contributed to the increase in age at marriage of girls in Nepal. Factors responsible for these changes include educational development, urbanization and development of mass communications. However, many parents still marry their daughters at very young ages and this practice is particularly prevalent in the Terai region. This paper examines several demographic data sets with a view to assessing their utility for understanding the determinants of early age of marriage of girls in the Terai. The Nepal Family Health Survey (1996), Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys (2001, 2006), the Nepal Adolescents and Young Adults Survey (1999) and the 2001 Population Census of Nepal describe changes in at marriage over time. Factors such as sex, religion, education, geographic region, place of residence (rural/urban), economic status of the household and of women, and occupation are included in these data sets. However, other factors such as age at menarche, dowry and cost of marriage and cross-border marriage migration, which have been found to affect the prevalence of the lower age at marriage of girls in the Terai region, have not been included in the existing demographic surveys. Findings from the current study suggest that these variables should be included in future demographic surveys.     

Social Background Differences in Early Family Behavior

Social background has historically been recognized as a major factor influencing family behavior, though recent work has largely emphasized racial/ethnic influences. Here we use 1994 – 1995 and 2001 – 2002 Add Health data to examine the cohabitation, first marriage, and first birth experience of young women. In a multistate life table context, hypothetical cohorts specified in terms of race and mother’s education are followed, from age 11 to age 24, as they move through 6 family‐related statuses. The results indicate that, for both Black and White women, a higher level of maternal education is generally associated with less cohabitation, less marriage, fewer first births, and a higher percentage of women who experience none of those transitions before age 24. Racial and social background differences are conceptually and empirically distinct. Because mother’s education is associated with substantially different trajectories of early family behavior for both Blacks and Whites, we argue that social background merits increased attention in research on contemporary American family patterns.     

Complete moment convergence of widely orthant dependent random variables

It is known that the dependence structure of widely orthant dependent (WOD) random variables is weaker than those of negatively associated (NA) random variables, negatively superadditive dependent (NSD) random variables, negatively orthant dependent (NOD) random variables, and extended negatively dependent (END) random variables. In this article, the results of complete moment convergence and complete convergence are presented for WOD sequence under the same moment conditions as independent sequence in classical result (Chow 1988 Chow, Y. (1988). On the rate of moment convergence of sample sums and extremes. Bull. Inst. Math. Acad. Sin. 16(3):177–201. [Google Scholar]).     

Interval estimation: An information theoretic approach

ABSTRACT

We develop here an alternative information theoretic method of inference of problems in which all of the observed information is in terms of intervals. We focus on the unconditional case in which the observed information is in terms the minimal and maximal values at each period. Given interval data, we infer the joint and marginal distributions of the interval variable and its range. Our inferential procedure is based on entropy maximization subject to multidimensional moment conditions and normalization in which the entropy is defined over discretized intervals. The discretization is based on theory or empirically observed quantities. The number of estimated parameters is independent of the discretization so the level of discretization does not change the fundamental level of complexity of our model. As an example, we apply our method to study the weather pattern for Los Angeles and New York City across the last century.     

Testing monotonic equilibrium residual entropy of N-State Random Evolution

In this study, we propose an information measure of uncertainty associated with the random equilibrium residual lifetime of a system driven by N-State Random Evolution. A U-statistic test driven by a moment inequality is proposed for testing the hypothesis that the uncertainty of equilibrium remaining life of a system remains unchanged (when system is in the steady state) against the alternative situation when system’s equilibrium residual life has increasing uncertainty over time (i.e., the life distribution has Increasing Equilibrium Residual Entropy property). Some numerical results such as tabulated critical values and empirical power of the proposed test statistic are presented as well.     

Statistical inference for α-series process with the inverse Gaussian distribution

Statistical inferences for the geometric process (GP) are derived when the distribution of the first occurrence time is assumed to be inverse Gaussian (IG). An α-series process, as a possible alternative to the GP, is introduced since the GP is sometimes inappropriate to apply some reliability and scheduling problems. In this study, statistical inference problem for the α-series process is considered where the distribution of first occurrence time is IG. The estimators of the parameters α, μ, and σ² are obtained by using the maximum likelihood (ML) method. Asymptotic distributions and consistency properties of the ML estimators are derived. In order to compare the efficiencies of the ML estimators with the widely used nonparametric modified moment (MM) estimators, Monte Carlo simulations are performed. The results showed that the ML estimators are more efficient than the MM estimators. Moreover, two real life datasets are given for application purposes.     

Asymptotic expansions of density of normalized extremes from logarithmic general error distribution

Logarithmic general error distribution is an extension of the log-normal distribution. In this paper, the asymptotic expansions of densities of normalized maximum from logarithmic general error distribution are derived under two different kinds of normalized constants. By applying the main results, the higher-order expansions of moments of maxima are established.     

论21世纪大学生理想信念体系的建构

大学生的思想政治教育以理想信念教育为核心.理想信念体系可划分为个人的理想信念,社会共同的理想信念,以及世界或人类的理想信念.个人的理想信念一般包括生活理想信念、道德理想信念、职业理想信念三个主要方面.理想信念教育要贴近大学生个人的理想信念,围绕社会共同的理想信念,导向世界共同的理想信念.     

Periodic integer-valued bilinear time series model

This paper deals with the study of some probabilistic and statistical properties of a periodic integer-valued diagonal bilinear model. The existence of a periodically strict stationary integer-valued process is shown. Sufficient conditions for the periodically stationary, both in the first and second orders, are established. The closed-forms of the mean and the second moment are obtained. The closed-form of the periodic autocovariance function is established. The Yule–Walker estimations of the underlying parameters are obtained. A simulation study is provided.     

吕大临生卒年及有关其《祭文》之作者考辨

吕大临是关学研究中的重要人物。通过甄别当前学界关于吕大临生卒年的各种异说，可以得出吕大临生于宋仁宗庆历八年（1048），卒于宋哲宗绍圣元年（1094）。并结合史料对《伊洛渊源录》卷八关于吕大临的《祭文》之作者作出合乎逻辑的考辨。