生态贫困视角下的贫困县多维贫困综合度量

作为国家扶贫开发决策实施的重要单元,贫困县贫困程度及其致贫原因的识别和评估是国家“精准扶贫”战略实施的前提和保障.本文从生态贫困的视角,设计了顾及自然环境-经济-社会可持续协调发展的县级别多维贫困度量指标体系,构建基于贫困指数-最小方差模型(PI-MVM)的县级多维贫困度量模型,以6个连片特困区的249个县为典型研究区,系统揭示片区-县级层面上的贫困程度、致贫原因及其空间分布特征.结果显示: 各片区的综合贫困程度由北向南逐渐加重,各片区县存在“从北向南、从东到西,贫困程度逐渐加重”的趋势;乌蒙片区西部、秦巴片区西北部各县贫困程度的高-高聚集现象突出;秦巴中南部以及乌蒙片区受自然环境因素影响较大,贫困程度较深.一般致贫型片区县较多,主导致贫型片区县聚集在贫困程度较低的片区;经济因素对贫困的缓解作用逐渐下降,自然环境、社会发展因素的影响逐渐明显.研究结果可以更加精准地全面把握贫困县的贫困区划特征,为指导研究区早日脱贫提供辅助决策技术支撑.     

Women's social power, child nutrition and poverty in Mali

While the macro-level association between poverty and child malnutrition is well-established, the concept of 'poverty' and its operationalization in terms of measures of socioeconomic status shed little or no light on the mechanisms through which malnutrition is created and/or prevented. This paper investigates a woman's social power, one such mechanism that may mediate the impact of poverty on childhood nutrition. This micro-level factor is examined using survey data on 402 children 5 years of age and younger and their 261 Fulbe mothers in rural Mali. A conceptual model of social power is developed and used to test the hypothesis that a mother's social power can predict her child's nutritional status.     

Polygyny and child survival in West Africa

This study examines the relationship between polygyny and child survival in light of conflicting findings reported in a number of studies. Using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys from six West African countries, the risks of neonatal, postneonatal, and overall infant mortality are estimated. Controlling for a set of social and bio-demographic factors, it is found that substantial risks of mortality are associated with polygyny. A separate analysis explores the possibility that polygyny's impact could differ from country to country. No significant interaction effects are detected, leading to the conclusion that regardless of the country in which it is practiced, polygyny still poses a challenge to the survival chances of West African children.     

Adequacy of dietary intakes and poverty in India: Trends in the 1990s

Linear programming methods, indicators of nutritional adequacy from the Indian Council of Medical Research and household expenditure survey data from the National Sample Survey Organization were used to construct poverty lines for India. Poverty ratios were calculated for 1993--1994 and 1999--2000 on the basis of nutritional adequacy poverty lines and compared to official estimates of poverty based on energy requirements. Nutritional adequacy poverty lines are higher than official poverty lines, particularly in rural areas. The application of nutritional adequacy poverty lines points to greater rural-urban poverty differences than in official estimates. Declines in rural poverty during the 1990s were also slower under the nutritional adequacy definition, especially in south India. There is a greater degree of rural-urban and regional bias in nutritional adequacy poverty reduction than suggested by official data. Inter-state variations in changes in nutritional poverty and official poverty in the 1990s are largely explained by differences in assumptions on overall price movements. However, relative price movements in food items also played a role, particularly the slow increase in prices of cereals and edible oils in comparison to the prices of pulses, and in some southern states, compared to milk and vegetable prices as well.     

虑及生态环境的十四片区贫困县多维贫困度量

贫困县监测作为新阶段国家扶贫战略格局的重要组成部分,也是国家“精准扶贫”战略实施的前提和保障.本研究充分考虑片区内脆弱生态环境与经济贫困的共生共存关系,以全国14个集中连片特困区内的724个县为研究区,设计体现经济状态(贫困表象)、社会状态(生活保障能力)和生态环境状态(区域发展潜在能力)的县级多维贫困度量指标体系,多尺度多角度分析贫困县的贫困程度、贫困类型、致贫原因及其空间分布特征.结果表明: 研究区内各县贫困程度为较低贫困和中度贫困多、低度贫困和高度贫困少的 “橄榄型”分布结构;空间上表现为西高东低的“阶梯状”异质性格局,同时存在不同量级、“星点”式贫困核心,贫困县多维贫困存在较强的全局空间依赖性,局部呈现为高-高与低-低集中式分布、高-低与低-高离散分布;胡焕庸线两侧的贫困分布特征差异明显;七因素综合型贫困县数量最多,区位优势、地形条件、扶贫绩效等是影响减贫发展的显著性因素,生态环境恶化、自然禀赋恶劣所导致的生态贫困已经成为我国大部分地区贫困的区域性特征.     

Health care utilization, socioeconomic factors and child health in India

This paper models the proximate determinants of height, weight and haemoglobin concentration of over 25,000 Indian children using data from the National Family Health Survey-3. The effects of public and private health care service utilization, food consumption patterns and maternal health status on child health were investigated in a multidisciplinary framework. Methodological issues such as potential endogeneity of explanatory variables and the appropriateness of combining height and weight as the body mass index were tackled. The results from models for children's heights and weight showed beneficial effects of child vaccinations against DPT, polio and measles, and negative effects of not utilizing government health facilities. The models for children's haemoglobin concentration indicated beneficial effects of food consumption patterns and treatment against intestinal parasites. The results provide several insights for improving child health in India.     

Son preference and child replacement in Bangladesh: a new look at the child survival hypothesis

Birth history data from women in the 1975-76 Bangladesh Fertility Survey were used to search for intentions to replace dead children. The median intervals between successive births of orders (i) and (i + 1) were not shorter when some siblings of orders below (i) had died. Nor was the median duration between the death of a child and the first posthumous birth shorter when the dead child was a boy or when it was survived by fewer than two brothers. The median intervals were generally shorter when the mother lived in an urban rather than a rural area but this difference was attributable only to the shorter duration of breast-feeding by urban women. These results disputed the notions that the timing of births was deliberately quicker to replace a dead child, that attempts at replacement were sex-selective, or that child replacement intentions were stronger in urban than in rural populations.     

Infant and child mortality in three culturally contrasting states of India.

Using cross-sectional, individual-level survey data from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh collected under the Indian National Family Health Survey programme of 1992-93, statistical modelling was used to analyse the impact of a range of variables on the survival status of children during their first 2 years of life. Attention was focused on the potential impact of the mother's autonomy. The strongest predictors of mortality were demographic and biological factors, breast-feeding behaviour, and use and knowledge of health services. Variables that can be interpreted as being related to maternal autonomy, such as the presence of a mother-in-law in the household, did not have a significant direct effect on child survival at the individual level, and their indirect effects were very limited.     

Effect of child survival on contraceptive use in Bangladesh.

A study in Bangladesh showed that couples who lost a child often stopped practising contraception in order to have another child. Logistic regression analysis revealed that contraceptive continuation was related to maternal age, parity, husband's education and the sex of the last child.     

Parents' age at birth of their offspring and child survival

This study presents some new results on parental age as a risk factor for child survival. The study is based on individual registration forms for live births and infant deaths collected in Hungary from 1984 to 1988. Logistic regression models have been fitted for early neonatal and neonatal mortality on the one hand, and post-neonatal mortality on the other hand. Children of older males and females have significantly higher early neonatal and neonatal mortality rates compared to those of younger males and females. The impact of age of both parents remains, however, slighter than that of other biological characteristics such as previous number of fetal deaths, induced abortions, or live births. The authors discuss possible biological explanations.     

Leishmaniasis and poverty

Leishmaniasis, a neglected tropical disease, has strong but complex links with poverty. The burden of leishmaniasis falls disproportionately on the poorest segments of the global population. Within endemic areas, increased infection risk is mediated through poor housing conditions and environmental sanitation, lack of personal protective measures and economically driven migration and employment that bring nonimmune hosts into contact with infected sand flies. Poverty is associated with poor nutrition and other infectious diseases, which increase the risk that a person (once infected) will progress to the clinically manifested disease. Lack of healthcare access causes delays in appropriate diagnosis and treatment and accentuates leishmaniasis morbidity and mortality, particularly in women. Leishmaniasis diagnosis and treatment are expensive and families must sell assets and take loans to pay for care, leading to further impoverishment and reinforcement of the vicious cycle of disease and poverty. Public investment in treatment and control would decrease the leishmaniasis disease burden and help to alleviate poverty.     

Mother's death and child survival: the case of early Quebec

The aim of this paper is to account for the effect of mother's death on child survival in a historical population. Using comprehensive data on the early French Canadian population of Quebec, evidence is provided for a higher risk of dying for motherless children that remains significant over all childhood and long after the death of the mother. The specific effect of the loss of maternal care was estimated by comparing mortality before and after mother's death, furnishing a means to control for family heterogeneity. No differential in investment between genders was detected before age 3, but older girls suffered a three-fold higher susceptibility to mother's death than their male counterparts. This suggests that grown-up girls assuming the responsibilities of the missing mother had a lower chance of survival.     

Infant and child mortality in India in the last two decades: a geospatial analysis

BACKGROUND: Studies examining the intricate interplay between poverty, female literacy, child malnutrition, and child mortality are rare in demographic literature. Given the recent focus on Millennium Development Goals 4 (child survival) and 5 (maternal health), we explored whether the geographic regions that were underprivileged in terms of wealth, female literacy, child nutrition, or safe delivery were also grappling with the elevated risk of child mortality; whether there were any spatial outliers; whether these relationships have undergone any significant change over historical time periods. METHODOLOGY: The present paper attempted to investigate these critical questions using data from household surveys like NFHS 1992-1993, NFHS 1998-1999 and DLHS 2002-2004. For the first time, we employed geo-spatial techniques like Moran's-I, univariate LISA, bivariate LISA, spatial error regression, and spatiotemporal regression to address the research problem. For carrying out the geospatial analysis, we classified India into 76 natural regions based on the agro-climatic scheme proposed by Bhat and Zavier (1999) following the Census of India Study and all estimates were generated for each of the geographic regions. RESULT/CONCLUSIONS: This study brings out the stark intra-state and inter-regional disparities in infant and under-five mortality in India over the past two decades. It further reveals, for the first time, that geographic regions that were underprivileged in child nutrition or wealth or female literacy were also likely to be disadvantaged in terms of infant and child survival irrespective of the state to which they belong. While the role of economic status in explaining child malnutrition and child survival has weakened, the effect of mother's education has actually become stronger over time.     

Faith and child survival: the role of religion in childhood immunization in Nigeria

This study assessed the role of mother's religious affiliation in child immunization status of surviving children 12 months of age and older in Nigeria, using data from the 2003 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS). Guided by two competing hypotheses--the 'characteristics hypothesis' and the 'particularized theology hypothesis'--variations in the risks of child immunization in Nigeria were examined using logistic regression analysis. The results indicate that religion plays a role in the risk of non-immunization; religion was not associated with the risk of partial immunization; however, religion was significantly associated with the reduced risk of full immunization.