Indigenous fertility in Australia: updating Alan Gray

Although he was not the first scholar to investigate it, there is little question that the Ph.D. research of Alan Gray, completed in 1983, represented a landmark in the study of Indigenous fertility in Australia. Convinced that ‘Aboriginal’ fertility had fallen rapidly through the 1970s, Gray set out to document and explain the decline. Weaving through a maze of sub-optimal census data he produced a series of age-specific and total fertility rates, refined by three broad geographic location categories, for 5-year periods from 1956–1961 to 1976–1981. These he subsequently updated to also include 1981–1986 and the 10-year period 1986–1996 as new census children-ever-borne data became available. He would doubtless have extended his series further had he lived to do so. For years his fertility estimates were graphed in the annual ABS publication Births Australia as the Bureau began publishing registration-based Indigenous fertility estimates from the late 1990s, but Indigenous birth registration data and fertility estimates based thereon remain to this day problematic in several respects. This paper summarises Alan Gray’s work, extends his Indigenous fertility estimates to the 2011–2016 intercensal period, and examines the results against registration-based estimates that have been subjected to (a) regular retrospective revision (in light of data processing flaws and substantial errors of closure in intercensal Indigenous population increments), and (b) the vagaries of significant late registration, and periodic registry efforts to clear backlogs of unregistered Indigenous births

Demographic disequilibrium in early twentieth century Thailand: Falling mortality, rising fertility, or both?

Estimates of Thai crude birth and death rates date from 1920, when the former was around 20 per thousand higher than the latter, implying natural increase of two per cent per annum. Such disequilibrium cannot have been the norm over the long-term historical past, when population growth must have been comparatively slow. This paper explores the bases for likely past relative equilibrium between Siamese birth and death rates, then seeks to explain the disequilibrium apparent by 1920. Classic demographic transition theory postulates initially high birth and death rates, this equilibrium eventually being broken by falling mortality. In Thailand, however, there is likely to have been both significant mortality decline and appreciable fertility increase after 1850, as the virtual elimination of indigenous warfare, rapid growth of the export rice economy and the demise of slavery and corvee labour created a new domestic environment. Characterized by more dispersed, often frontier, settlement, this environment was unprecedentedly sedate and settled, afforded ordinary households a previously unknown level of control over their resources of labour, and generated optimism about prospects for the next generation

Forming relationships in Australia: qualitative insights into a process important to human wellbeing

Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted during 2002-03 for the Australian Family Formation Decisions (AFFD) Project, this paper probes the relationship formation experiences of 115 women, men and couples of family-forming age living in eastern Australia. Contemporary relationship formation is characterized by a mixture of ambivalence and resignation to having limited control over the process on the one hand ('if it happens it happens'), and urgency on the other, especially among women seeking to fulfil maternal ambitions in their thirties after prioritizing other things earlier in their adult lives. For most the process of partnering involves trial and error, with timing - finding someone whose expectations of a relationship match one's own - posing a major challenge. It gives rise to a common phenomenon, the 'too soon syndrome', where relationships with many positive attributes are abandoned because one party perceives the other as too keen to 'settle down', and/or himself or herself as not ready to do so. The paper also examines impediments to partnering, including traditional ones like shyness; negative trial-and-error experiences; the demands of study and career establishment; pursuit of agendas emphasizing travel and enjoyment; sole parenthood; and parental marriage breakdown. A framework is provided by Beck's (1992) concept of reflexive modernization, and his associated proposition that life has become highly individualized with an emphasis on creating 'do-it-yourself' biographies

Measuring and decomposing inequity in self-reported morbidity and self-assessed health in Thailand

BACKGROUND In recent years, interest in the study of inequalities in health has not stopped at quantifying their magnitude; explaining the sources of inequalities has also become of great importance. This paper measures socioeconomic inequalities in self-reported morbidity and self-assessed health in Thailand, and the contributions of different population subgroups to those inequalities. METHODS The Health and Welfare Survey 2003 conducted by the Thai National Statistical Office with 37,202 adult respondents is used for the analysis. The health outcomes of interest derive from three self-reported morbidity and two self-assessed health questions. Socioeconomic status is measured by adult-equivalent monthly income per household member. The concentration index (CI) of ill health is used as a measure of socioeconomic health inequalities, and is subsequently decomposed into contributing factors. RESULTS The CIs reveal inequality gradients disadvantageous to the poor for both self-reported morbidity and self-assessed health in Thailand. The magnitudes of these inequalities were higher for the self-assessed health outcomes than for the self-reported morbidity outcomes. Age and sex played significant roles in accounting for the inequality in reported chronic illness (33.7 percent of the total inequality observed), hospital admission (27.8 percent), and self-assessed deterioration of health compared to a year ago (31.9 percent). The effect of being female and aged 60 years or older was by far the strongest demographic determinant of inequality across all five types of health outcome. Having a low socioeconomic status as measured by income quintile, education and work status were the main contributors disadvantaging the poor in self-rated health compared to a year ago (47.1 percent) and self-assessed health compared to peers (47.4 percent). Residence in the rural Northeast and rural North were the main regional contributors to inequality in self-reported recent and chronic illness, while residence in the rural Northeast was the major contributor to the tendency of the poor to report lower levels of self-assessed health compared to peers. CONCLUSION The findings confirm that substantial socioeconomic inequalities in health as measured by self-reported morbidity and self-assessed health exist in Thailand. Decomposition analysis shows that inequalities in health status are associated with particular demographic, socioeconomic and geographic population subgroups. Vulnerable subgroups which are prone to both ill health and relative poverty warrant targeted policy attention

Effects of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme on village doctor’s prescribing behaviour in Shandong Province

Objective: To assess the effects of China’s new community health insurance, the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS), on village doctors’ prescribing behaviour. NCMS began in 2003. Method, In 2005 we conducted a quasi-experimental case-control study in Shandong Province, and collected information from 2,271 patient visits in 30 village health stations. Results, NCMS has adversely influenced prescribing behaviour of village doctors. Average number of drugs prescribed, percentage of prescriptions containing antibiotics, number of antibiotics per prescription, percentage of patients given injections, and average per prescription cost were consistently higher in NCMS village health stations than non-NCMS. Within NCMS villages, prescribing behaviour towards insured patients was significantly different to the uninsured. Conclusion, Over-prescribing is common in villages with and without health insurance, with grave concerns for service quality and drug-use safety. Policy implications are NCMS should be redesigned to exert more influence on health providers, with incentives for cost containment and service quality. Stricter regulatory environment for prescriptions is necessary to counter irrational drug-use and ensure people’s access to effective care at reasonable cost.

Aspects of ex-nuptiality in New Zealand : toward a social demography of marriage and the family since the second world war

Traditionally in most Western countries religiously based social norms have held that sexual activity should be engaged in only within formally celebrated marital unions, which in turn should be regarded as lifelong. Nowhere have these norms ever been universally adhered to, especially by men, but in the last two to three decades they have been rejected on an unprecedented scale. Rising levels of nonmarital pregnancy, marital breakdown, and, more recently, informal cohabitation have been held in some quarters to greatly endanger the institutions of marriage and the family. Recognising the ease with which they can be misinterpreted, this thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of socio-demographic data pertaining to changing patterns of nonmarital sexual behaviour and changing attitudes to marriage and the family in New Zealand since the Second World War. Trends in nonmarital (and in particular premarital) pregnancy and childbearing, marriage and coresidence at marriage, and divorce are examined in detail. The study also explores changes in the pattern of placement of children born ex-nuptially, some of the personal consequences of childbearing following ex-nuptial conception, factors associated with divorce, and trends in the involvement of children in divorce. The drawing together of these phenomena within a single conceptual framework emphasises their joint reflection of forces for social change which have been operating in New Zealand. The evolutionary character of social change is stressed at several points. The wresting of control over courtship, mate selection, and the decision when to marry from parents by young people of the affluent 1950s is seen as having in many ways initiated the process. Among the forces recognised as having built on this foundation are the assumption of further generational independence by the young, pressure for, and achievement of, greater equality and independence by women, major improvements in women’s ability to control their fertility, and arisng out of these things a much more individualistic central set of values. Evidence presented suggests that by the latter half of the 1970s the more permissive sexual morality which successive youth cohorts have developed had acquired a certain maturity. It was being practised more openly and with greater ideological conviction. It was also leading less frequently to unplanned parenthood and early marriage. Indeed marriage was generally being approached much more cautiously, and had possibly been rejected altogether in some quarters. The former tendency may augur well for marital stability in the future, and due allowance must be made for the fact that recent instability has been partly the product of a unique, and temporary, combination of circumstances. On the other hand values and priorities which have assumed increased importance in domestic relations have in the process rendered marriage and the family inherently more fragile institutions

Hydrological and associated biogeochemical consequences of rapid global warming during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) hyperthermal, ~ 56 million years ago (Ma), is the most dramatic example of abrupt Cenozoic global warming. During the PETM surface temperatures increased between 5 and 9 °C and the onset likely took < 20 kyr. The PETM provides a case study of the impacts of rapid global warming on the Earth system, including both hydrological and associated biogeochemical feedbacks, and proxy data from the PETM can provide constraints on changes in warm climate hydrology simulated by general circulation models (GCMs). In this paper, we provide a critical review of biological and geochemical signatures interpreted as direct or indirect indicators of hydrological change at the PETM, explore the importance of adopting multi-proxy approaches, and present a preliminary model-data comparison. Hydrological records complement those of temperature and indicate that the climatic response at the PETM was complex, with significant regional and temporal variability. This is further illustrated by the biogeochemical consequences of inferred changes in hydrology and, in fact, changes in precipitation and the biogeochemical consequences are often conflated in geochemical signatures. There is also strong evidence in many regions for changes in the episodic and/or intra-annual distribution of precipitation that has not widely been considered when comparing proxy data to GCM output. Crucially, GCM simulations indicate that the response of the hydrological cycle to the PETM was heterogeneous – some regions are associated with increased precipitation – evaporation (P – E), whilst others are characterised by a decrease. Interestingly, the majority of proxy data come from the regions where GCMs predict an increase in PETM precipitation. We propose that comparison of hydrological proxies to GCM output can be an important test of model skill, but this will be enhanced by further data from regions of model-simulated aridity and simulation of extreme precipitation events