The global economic crisis and international migration: An uncertain outlook

This article investigates the impact of the global economic crisis on international migration. Empirical evidence is scarce and mainly captures short-term consequences. The study covers (1) international migration theory, (2) the impact of past financial crises on international migration, and (3) published expert opinions, studies and discussions. The impact varies by reason for migration and by migrants’ employment status. Labour migration is affected most, in particular migration of low-skilled persons. Political and environmental refugees, marriage migration and family reunion will not be much affected. Remittances are affected less than predicted. The management of migration during periods of economic downturns should be guided by short- and long-term perspectives on the role of migration in development.

Preconference Training Workshop: Multistate analysis of life histories with R

Multistate Analysis of Life Histories with R Frans Willekens, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute and Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research Workshop Venue: Rideau Salon Workshop Outline A. Introduction Multistate models describe the life course in terms of transitions individuals experience as they go through stages of life and move between states. These states may represent health states, family status, occupation, place of residence, education or other domains of life. Multistate models have been successfully used in a wide variety of applied sciences. The most fruitful areas of application are health sciences, demography and economics. Important examples of applications of multistate models are stem cell transplantation (with disease relapse and death as endpoints and graft-versus-host disease as intermediate states), estimation of healthy life expectancy, marital careers, migration histories, and participation in the labor market. These applications have in common a fundamental interest in competing risks, event histories and state sequences. The subject of the workshop is the modeling of life histories. Multistate analysis of life histories with R is an introduction to multistate event history analysis. It is an extension of survival analysis, in which a single terminal event (endpoint) is considered and the time-to-event is studied. Life histories are modeled as realizations of continuous-time Markov processes (and extensions). The statistical theory of counting processes emerged as the dominant theory for estimating transition rates from data on event counts and populations at risk. Non-parametric and parametric methods have been developed. In recent years, software packages for multistate modeling have become available. R is the language of choice and the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) is the main repository. The packages are free and the source code is available in CRAN. The packages include survival, eha, Epi, mvna, etm, mstate, msm, Biograph, MicSim andTraMineR. For a recent review, see Willekens and Putter (2014) Software for multistate analysis, Demographic Research 31(14):381-420, and the CRAN Task View on Survival Analysis In 2011, the Journal of Statistical Software published a special issue on multistate modeling (H. Putter, editor). Multistate modeling is an active area of research across disciplines. The research benefits from the current interest in prognostic modeling (of outcomes of health conditions and behavior/lifestyle) and predictive analytics

On the Compression of Reproductive Spans: the case of Andhra Pradesh in India

Many women in Andhra Pradesh marry early, have two or three children and accept voluntary sterilization at very early ages. The state has recently succeeded in reducing fertility to near replacement levels. Data from the second round of the National Family Health Survey are used to examine the duration between first marriage and sterility by distinguishing different marriage cohorts of the 4,032 ever-married women aged 15-49 years. Life table and hazard models are used to understand the cohort effects on the time spend in the effective reproductive span. The cohort effects remain highly significant when controlling for other demographic, social and reproductive attitude characteristics. Sterilization acceptance among younger women explains the compression trends in reproductive spans. Women’s position as mothers is undergoing transition in Andhra Pradesh and they seem to make familial decisions much faster than the older generations did

Chapter 1 Demographic Transitions in Europe and the World

Current demographic trends raise new questions, challenges and controversies. Comparing demographic trends in Europe and the NAME-region (North Africa and the Middle East), this book demonstrates how population change interacts with changing economic landscapes, social distinctions and political realities. A variety of drivers contribute to demographic change in the various regions and countries considered, such as family policies, economic realities, the impact of educational differentials and the attitudes towards marriage. On the macro-level the new trends are restructuring the age composition of populations and are reshaping the life courses of individuals and families. In turn, the impact demographic forces have on the organisation of labour markets, on fiscal policies, on the care of the elderly, on migration flows and on political changes can be quite radical. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781472439543_oachapter1.pd

Compression or expansion of dementia in Germany? An observational study of short-term trends in incidence and death rates of dementia between 2006/07 and 2009/10 based on German health insurance data

Introduction There have been recent reports about a decline in dementia incidence, but only little is known about trends in the mortality of patients with dementia. Only the simultaneous analysis of both trends can inform whether the reported decline in dementia has led to a compression of dementia into higher ages. Methods We used health claims data from the largest public health insurer in Germany over the two time periods 2004/07 and 2007/10. Dementia was defined according to the International Classification of Disease 10th revision (ICD-10) numbers G30, G31.0, G31.82, G23.1, F00, F01, F02, F03 and F05.1 or by a prescription of cholinesterase inhibitors or memantine or both. In the two time periods, we observed 502,065 person-years of exposure and 10,881 incident dementia cases and 10,013 person-years of exposure among the newly demented and 3049 deaths. We estimated the relative risks of the two time periods applying proportional hazard models and calculated years with or without dementia using the illness-death model. Results Dementia incidence was significantly higher in 2006/07 than in 2009/10, whereas mortality with dementia tended to be lower in the first period, albeit statistically significant among women only. Mortality without dementia tended to be higher in the first period for men and remained stable for women. Combining these trends, we found that at age 65 remaining life years with dementia were compressed by a yearly 0.4 months for men and 1.4 months for women. At the same time, remaining life years without dementia increased by a yearly 1.4 months for men and 1.1 months for women. Conclusions This study provides evidence that the increase in dementia-free life years went together with an absolute compression of life years with dementia. This positive trend was particularly strong among women. Results were controlled for trends in multi-morbidity and care need, suggesting that the postponement in dementia incidence is not simply caused by a delay in diagnosis