Charini Nanayakkara, Peter Christen, Chris Dibben
et al.
Objectives
Reconstructing populations by linking vital event records can facilitate a variety of studies including the analysis of hereditary illnesses and socioeconomic changes. We present a record linkage framework to identify siblings, which is a first step in population reconstruction, applied on a Scottish database spanning nearly 120 years.
Methods
Pairwise comparison of records to identify matches (siblings) and non-matches (non-siblings) is not scalable to large population databases containing millions of records. We therefore apply a novel blocking approach based on Locality Sensitive Hashing to reduce the comparison space, and employ multiprocessing techniques to further improve scalability. In addition to calculating attribute similarities to determine whether a record pair is a match or not, to improve linkage quality we also incorporate temporal constraints (such as siblings born three months apart being not feasible). The final linkage results are stored in a Neo4j graph database to facilitate querying and visualisation.
Results
We apply our record linkage framework on vital event records (around 14 million birth, 8 million death, and 4 million marriage certificates) from Scotland to identify records that correspond to sibling groups. We generate a similarity graph, with nodes representing records and edges corresponding to similarities, by comparing over 150 million record pairs using attributes that are expected to be similar for siblings (such as mother's name and parents' marriage place). Using graph-clustering techniques we then group records such that each cluster represents a sibling group. We independently link birth, death, and marriage certificates for sibling group generation to create complementary results, which we then use to identify high confidence links. We also employ unsupervised evaluation techniques to assess the quality of our linkage results.
Conclusion
Large-scale population record linkage is non-trivial due to quality and scalability challenges. We propose a scalable and effective population linkage framework for identifying siblings by linking and clustering vital event records. We store our linkage outcomes in a graph database to facilitate visualisation and research based on reconstructed populations.
Amid global population ageing and evidence that health disparities in later life
often stem from accumulated disadvantage, it is essential to assess health inequalities in
older adults in an internationally comparable and comprehensive way. Addressing the
shortcomings of analysing average health levels in a population while preserving the comparability
of countries and subpopulations, we estimate Gini coefficients to examine
inequalities in physical and cognitive functioning of older adults in 41 countries, stratified
by gender and five-year age group. Utilising data from 11 nationally representative surveys
on the health and ageing of older adults, we find substantial heterogeneities in physical and
cognitive functioning inequalities across countries for both women and men. Notably,
countries with higher median scores in cognitive functioning tend to exhibit significantly
less pronounced inequalities. Furthermore, our results reveal a steep positive age gradient in
both dimensions of cognitive functioning. Taken together, our descriptive results provide a
valuable foundation for researchers and policymakers aiming to identify targeted interventions
and policy measures to address health disparities.
Objectives
This study examined the relationship between co-occurring homelessness and substance misuse and the use of secondary healthcare in Wales. The study was carried out as part of the Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) Substance Misuse Pilot Wales, which focuses on early intervention and prevention of escalation of substance misuse.
Methods
The study used routinely collected administrative data from the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank. Datasets used include primary care, hospital admissions, emergency department and specialist substance misuse treatment.
We identified a cohort of over 32,000 Welsh residents who were in substance misuse treatment between 2014 and 2019.
The analysis looked at the relationship between co-occurring homelessness and substance misuse in relation to
• the frequency of emergency department attendances
• the reasons for emergency hospital admissions
• the frequency of hospital admissions
• the length of hospital admissions
We also looked at how homelessness, types of substance misuse, and demographics interacted.
Results
For the individuals in substance misuse treatment, homelessness was associated with:
• an increase in the number of times an individual would be expected to attend an emergency department
• an increased likelihood that an individual would be admitted to hospital as an emergency
• an increase in the number of times an individual would be expected to be admitted to hospital
• an increased likelihood of emergency hospital admissions for certain diagnoses, including:
• injury and poisoning
• mental and behavioural disorders
• skin diseases
• an increase in the expected duration of hospital admissions.
Conclusion
This study highlights the health impacts of co-occurring homelessness on individuals in substance misuse treatment, showing how people facing multiple disadvantages, like homelessness and substance misuse, experience profound health inequalities.
Understanding how people with these co-occurring conditions access health services could help healthcare providers better plan support for those individuals.
Alcohol consumption remains a public health problem, affecting various organ systems. Its impact can be detrimental to adolescents, leading to disturbed social and economic development. Gender differences exist, with male adolescents being more affected. This research aims to understand alcohol consumption among male adolescents in Indonesia. This study used pseudo longitudinal data from the 2017 Indonesian Demographic Health Survey (IDHS) and employed a survival analysis method using the generalized gamma approach. A total of 12,373 (weighted) adolescents were analyzed, with 4,573 of them classified as events. A time ratio (TR) was reported. Smoking was identified as the most substantial variable, shortening the survivability of alcohol consumption by 19%. Additionally, living in rural areas, having tried drugs, and having had sex were identified as risk factors, while education level and mobile phone ownership were protective factors. Risk behaviors shorten alcohol consumption survival among adolescents. Cross-sectoral interventions and comprehensive counseling are essential for effective prevention.
Scientists are well aware of the major social, economic and cultural challenges brought about by population decline. However, we can often underestimate the more extreme interpretations of both the causes and the consequences of population decline in the popular discourse. In this commentary, I explore some of these toxic narratives, and speculate about how they may be linked to what appears to be a prevailing populist/ethno-nationalist view of population grounded in political tropes, rather than in scientific reality. Using Armitage’s (2021) concept of “demographic imaginaries”, I argue that much of this public discourse serves several vital purposes: to try to simplify a complex issue; to try to “unify”; to try to blame and scapegoat; and, ultimately, to try to negate the obligation to make tough, complex political and policy decisions. I also argue that scientists working in the field of population decline need to be more aware of these tropes, and should make more active efforts to ground the discourse of population decline in science and reality. I conclude that a bottom-up approach to responding to population decline may be the most fruitful avenue for progress in the future.
On their journeys to and through Europe, refugees and other migrants are commonly subjected to violence in its multifaceted forms. We argue that these “journeys of violence” are a direct effect of a fundamentally uneven and asymmetric global mobility regime that creates frictions and fragmentations in the European border space and beyond. Our argument is based on: (1) a state-of-the-art literature review on refugees’ mobilities towards Europe and new patterns of involuntary immobilisation through border regimes, (2) a secondary analysis of recent quantitative data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), which includes a large data set on refugee’s journeys to Germany, and (3) original qualitative interviews that were conducted with migrants in Germany and Bosnia-Herzegovina. We will first show that mobility in the context of violence is highly selective and that trajectories of mobility significantly depend on mobility capital. Second, we consider the fortification of European borders and the externalisation of control regimes as facets of structural violence and demonstrate their effects on refugees’ mobility, namely the fragmentation of journeys and the systemic production of situations of protracted immobility at multiple border sites. Third, we provide insights into refugees’ exposure to and experiences of direct violence on their journeys, which must be understood as immediate consequences of the structurally violent conditions that govern their mobility and the cultural violence of delegitimising and illegalising refugees’ movements.
* This article belongs to a special issue on "Refugee Migration to Europe – Challenges and Potentials for Cities and Regions".
Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology, City population. Including children in cities, immigration
Janelle Boram Lee, Henry Ntanda, Kharah Ross
et al.
Objective
To understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on families in Canada by specifically examining the relationship between maternal mental distress (MD), child distress (CD) and family strain (FS) trends over time. We linked the Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition (APrON) longitudinal cohort data and COVID-19 Impact Survey (CIS).
Approach
Three waves of CIS (March 2020 to July 2021), collected from APrON longitudinal cohort, were used. Demographic variables from APrON were linked with CIS. Mothers’ depression, anxiety, and/or stress scores were standardized separately for different symptoms, averaged at each wave, and combined as one maternal MD variable (low/medium/high). CD was measured across emotional, conduct, hyperactivity, and peer problem scales (low/high). FS was defined as COVID-19 straining family relationships, including partners, parent-child, and siblings (yes/no). Latent class analyses were performed to identify and categorize membership across the variables. To address the objective, multiple logistic regression models were conducted.
Results
The sample consisted of 157 participants were included in the study; 19.1% reported FS during COVID-19. Three latent classes were formed for maternal MD: consistently low (36.9%), medium (44.0%), and high (19.1%) across the follow-up period. Two latent classes were formed for CD: consistently low (79.6%) and high (20.4%). When adjusted for COVID-19 related covariates (e.g., maternal worries about child’s well-being/education, family difficulty with childcare/schoolwork) and socioeconomic status, mothers with medium and high levels of maternal MD were at increased odds of experiencing FS during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to those with a low level of distress (medium aOR = 3.90[1.08, 14.03]; high aOR = 4.57[1.03, 20.25]). The adjusted association between child distress and FS was not statistically significant (aOR = 1.75[0.59, 5.20]).
Conclusion
Understanding how MD could affect family strain is important as many families recover from the pandemic. More distressed individuals experience greater FS over time, suggesting this association as a chronic problem. Stakeholders should tailor support systems to longer-term, family-level interventions improving family relationships and maternal-child MHD impacted by COVID-19.
En el marco de los estudios sobre migración y género, este trabajo se destaca porque logra, como su título lo indica, hacer visible la participación de las mujeres en los movimientos migratorios en la Argentina desde los inicios de la masiva inmigración de ultramar de mediados del siglo XIX hasta la actualidad -en la que confluyen las dos caras del fenómeno: el predominio de la inmigración de sudamericano/as y la emigración de argentinos/as.
Social Sciences, Demography. Population. Vital events
En este artículo se establecen los determinantes de las diferencias de las funciones de mortalidad entre pacientes indígenas y no indígenas al iniciar la propagación de la pandemia de COVID-19. Procesando la información del 22 de mayo de 2020 de la Secretaría de Salud de México, se realizan análisis de supervivencia al contrastar a pacientes contagiados con el virus que hablan y no hablan lengua indígena mediante modelos de Kaplan-Meier y modelos de riesgo proporcional de Cox. Para ello se toma como variable dependiente el tiempo desde el inicio de los síntomas hasta su deceso y como covariables sus características sociodemográficas y las características territoriales de los municipios de residencia. Al final se determina que la tasa de contagio es del 43% en los pacientes indígenas y 35.4% en los no indígenas mientras que la tasa de letalidad en indígenas contagiados es del 20.4% y del 11% en no indígenas, lo cual confirma la hipótesis de que los pacientes indígenas presentan menor probabilidad de sobrevivir.
Social Sciences, Demography. Population. Vital events
Note: This paper was presented in an oral session on causal inferences at the 2022 Population Association of America in Atlanta, GA. The practice of causal inference experienced significant growth throughout the social sciences in the past twenty-five years. However, it is unclear how these advances have been incorporated into quantitative sociology. To address this, we reviewed publications in Demography in six 5-year waves from 1995 to 2020. We assessed how authors describe the process of deconfounding statistical models. We found that the treatment of confounding factors was highly varied. Inconsistency in the descriptions of variable selection made it difficult to create a reliable quantitative measure. Still, there was minimal evidence that authors coalesced around the improvements in causal inference, at least in how they described control variables. While alignment between demography and improvements in causal inference would help consolidate and improve the science, this alignment is not evident. We explain some benefits of greater consistency and address how peer-review journals could affect the rationale behind variable selection in quantitative sociology.
This study examines attitudes toward assisted reproductive technologies (ART) among immigrant women and non-migrants in Germany. The social relevance of ART is increasing in Western countries due to overall low birth rates, a high rate of childlessness, and a gap between the desired and the actual numbers of children. Previous literature has been scarce, however, on attitudes toward ART, and immigrant minorities have rarely been included in studies on ART.
Our working hypotheses are drawn from theoretical considerations on political socialisation and cultural integration. The analysis is based on data collected in a pilot study in 2014 and 2015. The sample includes 960 women aged 18 to 50 living in Germany. About 81 percent of the sample are immigrants who originate from Turkey, Poland, the Balkan countries, or countries of the (Russian) Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). We study the social norm to use ART to have a child, the personal attitude of whether a woman would use ART herself, and the methods that they would consider for their own use.
Our results show that ART is overall socially acceptable, and the majority of women said that they would use it if necessary. There is significant variation between the origin groups, however. Non-migrants show the lowest acceptance rates and migrants from Poland and Turkey the highest approval. There is also variation in the ART procedures considered for use with the migrants more approving of heterologous methods than non-migrants. The differences between the origin groups diminish only partly when controlling for further explanatory variables, i.e. gender-role attitudes, religiosity, and socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents.
We conclude that attitudes toward ART are shaped less by socio-demographic characteristics, but rather by cultural factors and the socialization in the migrants’ countries of origin. The diversity in attitudes toward ART by cultural background should be acknowledged in research and public discourses on ART as well as in regulating policies.
* This article belongs to a special issue on migrant fertility.
Urban groups. The city. Urban sociology, City population. Including children in cities, immigration
Population problems are characterized by an increasing rate of rapid population growth (BKKBN, 2012). Family planning program is the government’s spearhead to control population growth. Surabaya City which consist of five regions has diverse characteristics of population, ranging from different levels of Education 2015 (71.95%) and exceeding Surabaya’s achievement target by 70% (Dinkes Surabaya, 2015). However, increased achievements of MOW and MOP acceptors in the following year were not guaranteed. Based on those statements, the identification of resource potency to increase the achievement of permanent contraception method was performed. The resource data was the achievement data of Surabaya in 2014–2016. The objective of this study was to describe resource potency to increase MOP and MOW achievement in Surabaya based on achievement data in 2014–2016. The secondary data, namely permanent contraception data was obtained from KB Sector in Department of Population Control, Women Empowerment and Child Protection of Surabaya City and adjusted with the amounts of available midwives, KB staffs and health care facilities in each district. Based on the data analyzed, it was found that resource potency from available midwives, KB staffs and health care facilities had potential effect on permanent contraception achievement in 5 Surabaya’s regions. It was recommended to give IEC involving religion leader or public figure with high influence on public to perform persuasive effort to other acceptors.
Internet media have an influence on many tourism-related issues. This article presents the results of research into the role of tourism-themed portals in the trips taken by Polish university students between 2010 and 2012. The research sought to answer the following questions: whether tourism-related internet media have an influence on the students’ behaviour before, during the trip and when they arrive at their destination; how often they are used by the respondents during their trips; and whether Polish students actively participate in internet media by voicing their opinions. As it appears, internet media serve as one of the “travel companions” for young people. They are used when preparing the trip, the vast majority “take them” with them and check them during the trip, while almost half of them check them on vacation, e.g. to share their experience over the internet.
White flight refers to a phenomenon whereby native middle class residents avoid
or move away from areas with immigrant concentrations thereby contributing to
ethnic and residential segregation. The recent increase in immigration into Finland
has spurred public debates suggesting that white flight - in connection with school
choices - might also be happening in Finland. In this article, the phenomenon is
scrutinized and unravelled conceptually. The discussion draws on a recent qualitative
study undertaken in Turku. The study involved 31 in-depth interviews with native
Finnish parents of primary- and preschool aged children. The results indicate that
neither the schools nor immigration determined families housing decisions that were,
ultimately, multifaceted and situated within specific life courses and circumstances.
Mainly thematic but also discourse and life course analysis methods were employed
to tease out nuances around talk and action, also helping to further understand the
dynamics of attitudes in this context.
Social Sciences, Demography. Population. Vital events
David Francisco Ramírez Sánchez, Servando Gutiérrez Ramírez
El punto de partida del presente trabajo es el propósito de conocer qué relación existe entre las variables masculinidad y uso de preservativos en un contexto de jóvenes de clases media y popular del sur de Quito. En primera instancia, a través de entrevistas a profundidad, se ubican tres tipos de masculinidad (tradicional, híbrida y moderna), que, vinculadas a la paternidad, evidencian cambios culturales significativos. Del mismo modo, se procede con la relación entre sexualidad y uso de preservativos: se encuentran tres modelos de sexualidad (hegemónico, híbrido y abiertamente aceptado), que, relacionados con los de masculinidad, muestran que, salvo contadas excepciones, estos jóvenes valoran cada vez menos la virilidad frente al amor, a la comunicación y a la responsabilidad hacia la pareja, con la limitación de que el modelo de masculinidad tradicional y el de sexualidad hegemónico siguen teniendo un peso importante en su imaginario social.
Social Sciences, Demography. Population. Vital events