JOURNAL OF POPULATION RESEARCH最新文献

We investigate the forecasting accuracy of several simple methods for predicting mortality in small regional areas in Poland. We focus on methods that scale country-level forecasts appropriately and, therefore, can be used by official statistical agencies to improve population projections. We examine data from 379 sub-NUTS-3 districts in Poland for the period 2006–2019, divided into three subperiods. The first period is treated as the training sample and the latter two the testing subperiods. The mortality surface method delivers the most accurate forecasts of the mortality profiles whereas using the district-level standardized mortality rates (SMR) calculated for several broad age groups to scale the country-level mortality forecasts gives the best life expectancy at birth predictions. The latter approach is far better than using the NUTS-2-based standardized mortality rate (SMR), as practiced by the Polish statistical agency. For single age-groups predictions, the SMR-based methods deliver relatively accurate forecasts for young cohorts, but their forecasting accuracy deteriorates significantly with age.

This article develops a demographic method to estimate the civilian noninstitutional population for counties and county equivalents in the U.S. While these data provide the key sampling frame for national labor market surveys and denominators for labor market prevalence rates, the data are thus far unavailable for small areas. I develop a modified cohort component method to produce novel, monthly estimates of the civilian noninstitutional population for all U.S. counties using publicly available data on population and vital statistics with minimal modifications. The resulting population data may be used by researchers and policymakers to study within-year population dynamics as they relate to economic and demographic factors. I further extend the method to produce short-term population projections that include the most current vital statistics. The method compares favorably to existing annual, midyear estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau, but is prone to error in areas with fewer vital events.

Registration of birth within the first year of life is important to ensure children receive its full benefits and that fertility statistics derived from these data are informative for policy. This study provides an up-to-date global and regional assessment of the timing of birth registration by using all available birth registration data of children aged less than five years reported in Demographic and Health Surveys and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys from 2010 onwards. We calculated adjusted age-specific birth registration completeness by converting period age-specific completeness data into a hypothetical cohort. Timing of birth registration was analysed using ratios of adjusted age-specific completeness, with differentials by region, over time, and level of completeness assessed using bivariate and multivariate analyses. Almost 20% of registered births in countries with incomplete birth registration (less than 95%) were not registered until after 12 months, and this has not improved since 2010. In several countries this figure is greater than 50%, particularly in South Asia. There remains considerable scope to improve the timeliness of birth registration, particularly in countries where the overall level of completeness is lower. Strengthening and enforcing legislation for the mandatory registration of births before age 12 months and greater involvement of the health sector in registration processes are two ways which will improve birth registration timing.

Whether the ‘healthy migrant effect’ exhibits different patterns in mortality and morbidity and how such patterns change during the life course have not been adequately understood in the literature. Using the datasets of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, this study presents an in-depth investigation of the healthy migrant effect and its age variations in Australia. Specifically, this study estimates life expectancy (LE) and healthy life expectancy (HLE) of the Australia-born and overseas-born populations, as well as eight Australian migrant groups, and decomposes the HLE differences into mortality and morbidity differences from three dimensions: age, gender and country of birth. The results reveal that compared with the Australia-born population, the overseas-born population enjoys a prominently longer LE; however, they suffer a similar or lower HLE after age 65 and a lower HLE/LE ratio throughout all ages. Young overseas-born adults manifest a more significant health advantage in both mortality and morbidity than early-life and older overseas-born individuals; however, the morbidity advantage of young migrants, particularly those who are female and originated from culturally different countries, declines dramatically with ageing. The results suggest that overall, migrants do not have the same advantage in morbidity as they do in mortality and that health advantages of migrants decreases with time in both dimensions of health and more rapidly for morbidity. The results suggest that pertinent policies are needed to reduce acculturation-related challenges and to mitigate the decline in migrants’ health in the post-migration environment to ensure better quality of life outcomes of migrants.

Smoking among Spanish women has increased during the last 50 years and is considered by some authors a modern epidemic. However, mortality risk by cohorts may differ at a regional level, given that health inequalities (and the determinants of smoking and its consequences) are regionally patterned. We applied an Age-Period-Cohort model to identify birth cohort effects on female lung cancer mortality in Spain. We found a strong linear increase in lung cancer mortality during the 1980–2019 period in all regions. Cohorts born between 1935 and 1955 presented a higher relative risk of death at a national and subnational level. However, we found diverging cohort patterns across regions afterward, with some regions presenting a slight mortality improvement (or stagnation) in their youngest cohorts, while in other regions mortality kept increasing. This suggests that inequalities in lung cancer mortality in Spain among women are not only generationally based, but that generational risks also vary across space. Some of the regions that presented improvements in mortality among its younger cohorts are Madrid, Navarra, and the Basque Country, which are some of the wealthiest in the Country. While speculative, this could imply that improvements at a regional level might be associated with factors related to structural conditions that result in the adoption of healthy behaviors.

With the rising occurrence of climatic events and their implications for population dynamics (migration, mortality, and fertility), understanding the interplay between disasters and fertility decisions becomes increasingly important. However, the literature on the relationship between disasters and fertility remains limited. This paper aims to bridge this research gap by comprehensively reviewing published studies over recent decades. The review uncovers the underlying determinants associated with changes in fertility and their relationship with disasters. This review examines peer-reviewed journal articles published between 1990 and 2022, which focused on disaster events regardless of time and place, written in English and available with full-texts, including those categorized under Demography, Family Studies, Environmental Studies and Geography in selected databases: Web of Science, Scopus, CINAHL, PubMed, and Google Scholar. In total, 73 original articles were analyzed. Disasters have varying effects on fertility rates, with some studies showing an increase in fertility due to limited access to reproductive health services and the impact of child mortality. In contrast, others indicate a decline linked to socioeconomic changes and restricted healthcare access. Policymakers and researchers must consider these complexities when designing interventions to address the diverse impacts of disasters on fertility patterns and behaviors. Further research is needed to deepen our understanding and inform targeted policies.