Increases in union stability and non-union childbearing during the latter half of the 20th century produced substantial increases in the prevalence of step-families. Research on step-family fertility in several European countries and the United States show that, net of a couple’s combined...

Abdel Omran's 1971 theory of "Epidemiologic Transition" was the first attempt to account for the extraordinary advances in health care made in industrialized countries since the 18th century. In the framework of the Demographic Transition, it implied a general convergence of life expectancies...

While, during several decades, unfavourable trends in mortality were quite similar in Central Europe and in the former USSR, in the most recent years, these two parts of Europe are diverging. In most Central European countries, life expectancy is now increasing mainly thanks to a decline in...

This paper evaluates the quality of the data collected as part of the Kenya and Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Projects, two longitudinal household surveys that examine the role of social networks in influencing attitudes and behavior regarding family size, family planning, and HIV/AIDS...

This article examines changes in network structure using data on conversational networks from the 1998 and 2001 rounds of the Malawi Diffusion and Ideation Change project. The principal aims are to show that network structure can change significantly in relatively short periods - in particular...

In the previous two decades there has been considerable progress in recognizing biases due to selectivity that are associated with the use of observational data to make causal inferences and in developing models to control for these biases statistically. Often there is a difference between...

We use a microsimulation model to estimate the proportions of rural Malawian brides and grooms who are already HIV positive when they marry. The model, a demographic model of reproduction and mortality overlaid with a model of disease transmission, incorporates behavioural input data derived...

This paper introduces a set of papers presented at the conference "Research on Demographic Aspects of HIV/AIDS in Rural Africa", held at the Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, October 28-29, 2002. The aim of the conference was to provide a forum for the presentation of...

This article analyses changes in marital status differences in mortality from approximately 1970 to 1995 among men and women aged 65-74 in ten developed countries (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England and Wales, Finland, France, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden). Data were obtained from the...

Trends in child mortality disparities show that within country inequities have remained constant in some countries and worsened in most of the other ones. Only three countries, with relatively small populations which comprise less than 2 per cent of our sample, were able to achieve both a...