Are Educational Differentials in Mortality Increasing in the United States?

Because of the value that individuals place on health and longevity, levels of mortality are among the most central indicators of social and economic well-being. Analysts are concerned not only with the average level of mortality but also with its distribution among social groups, which is a fundamental indicator of social inequality. The principal dimension on which these assessments are now made in the United States is educational attainment. The decisive shift from occupational groups, the classic dimension used by the Registrar-General of England and Wales, to educational groups as the basis for assessment occurred with the publication of Kitagawa and Hauser\u27s (1973) major study of American mortality differentials in 1960. Educational attainment has two main advantages relative to occupation and income, the other common indicators of social stratification. It is available for people who are not in the labor force; and its value is less influenced by health problems that develop in adulthood. Since health problems can lead to both high mortality and low income, comparisons of death rates of different income groups, for example, are biased by their mutual dependence on a third variable, the extent of ill health. For these reasons, educational attainment has become the principal social variable used in epidemiology as well as in demography (Liberatos et al. 1988)

Using Successive Censuses to Reconstruct the African-American Population, 1930-1990

The Census Bureau\u27s program to estimate the completeness of decennial census counts for age, sex, and race groups relies principally upon what it terms demographic analysis. The essence of this approach is to introduce extraneous information on the number of births, deaths, and migrations, derived from non-census sources, to estimate the true size of each birth cohort at the time of a census (Robinson et al., 1993; Himes and Clogg, 1992). Comparison of this alternative estimate to the census count provides an estimate of the degree of under - or over-enumeration in the census, often termed the census undercount. Acceptance of the estimated undercount implies that the census itself is irrelevant to estimating the true size of the population; whatever deficiencies it contained would be accurately and completely revealed by comparison to the estimate based on demographic analysis

Effects of Age Misreporting on Mortality Estimates at Older Ages

This study examines how age misreporting typically affects estimates of mortality at older ages. We investigate the effects of three patterns of age misreporting & age overstatement, age understatement, and symmetric age misreporting & on mortality estimates at ages 40 and above. We consider five methods to estimate mortality: conventional estimates derived from vital statistics and censuses; longitudinal studies where age is identified at baseline; variable-r procedures based on age distributions of the population; variable-r procedures based on age distributions of deaths; and extinct generation methods. For each of the age misreporting patterns and each of the methods of mortality estimation, we find that age misstatement biases mortality estimates downwards at the oldest ages

Age-Linked Institutions and Age Reporting Among Older African Americans

With economic and technological development, numerical age became an important dimension of social differentiation in the United States. The vast majority of Americans now have the ability to report their own age and the ages of relatives with accuracy. Nevertheless, studies have found that age misreporting remains substantial for older African Americans. This paper describes levels of age misreporting and investigates the determinants of age reporting accuracy on the death certificates of a national sample of native-born African Americans aged 65+. Consistent with previous studies, levels of age misreporting are found to be high. When checked against childhood census records, only 53% of the death certificate ages are found to be correctly reported; slightly over 10% are misstated by five years or more. Multivariate results provide compelling evidence that the quality of age reporting critically depends on interaction with age-linked institutions

Multiple marker mapping of quantitative trait loci of Finnish dairy cattle by regression

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Consistency of Age Reporting on Death Certificates and Social Security Administration Records Among Elderly African-American Decedents

This paper investigates the quality of age reporting in vital statistics and Social Security/Medicare data among elderly African-Americans. The authors examine whether the death certificate or Social Security age is more likely to reflect accurately the decedents\u27 true age at death by matching their sample to the US Censuses of 1900, 1910 and 1920, and identify factors associated with consistency of age reporting on death certificates and social security records. The results reveal significant discrepancies in age at death data. Birth record availability and literacy were identified as key predictors of age agreement. The match to an early-life census record showed greater agreement with Social Security age than with death certificate age at death. The results have implications for the collection of age information in surveys of elderly African-Americans

Weight Loss Trajectories in Healthy Weight Coaching : Cohort Study

Background: As global obesity prevalence continues to increase, there is a need for accessible and affordable weight management interventions, such as web-based programs. Objective: This paper aims to assess the outcomes of healthy weight coaching (HWC), a web-based obesity management program integrated into standard Finnish clinical care. Methods: HWC is an ongoing, structured digital 12-month program based on acceptance and commitment therapy. It includes weekly training sessions focused on lifestyle, general health, and psychological factors. Participants received remote one-on-one support from a personal coach. In this real-life, single-arm, prospective cohort study, we examined the total weight loss, weight loss profiles, and variables associated with weight loss success and program retention in 1189 adults (963 women) with a BMI >25 kg/m(2) among participants of the program between October 2016 and March 2019. Absolute (kg) and relative (%) weight loss from the baseline were the primary outcomes. We also examined the weight loss profiles, clustered based on the dynamic time-warping distance, and the possible variables associated with greater weight loss success and program retention. We compared different groups using the Mann-Whitney test or Kruskal-Wallis test for continuous variables and the chi-squared test for categorical variables. We analyzed changes in medication using the McNemar test. Results: Among those having reached the 12-month time point (n=173), the mean weight loss was 4.6% (SE 0.5%), with 43% (n=75) achieving clinically relevant weight loss (>= 5%). Baseline BMI >= 40 kg/m(2) was associated with a greater weight loss than a lower BMI (mean 6.6%, SE 0.9%, vs mean 3.2%, SE 0.6%; P=.02). In addition, more frequent weight reporting was associated with greater weight loss. No significant differences in weight loss were observed according to sex, age, baseline disease, or medication use. The total dropout rate was 29.1%. Dropouts were slightly younger than continuers (47.2, SE 0.6 years vs 49.2, SE 0.4 years; P=.01) and reported their weight less frequently (3.0, SE 0.1 entries per month vs 3.3, SE 0.1 entries per month; P Conclusions: A comprehensive web-based program such as HWC is a potential addition to the repertoire of obesity management in a clinical setting. Heavier patients lost more weight, but weight loss success was otherwise independent of baseline characteristics.Peer reviewe

An empirical cognitive model of the development of shared understanding of requirements

It is well documented that customers and software development teams need to share and refine understanding of the requirements throughout the software development lifecycle. The development of this shared understand- ing is complex and error-prone however. Techniques and tools to support the development of a shared understanding of requirements (SUR) should be based on a clear conceptualization of the phenomenon, with a basis on relevant theory and analysis of observed practice. This study contributes to this with a detailed conceptualization of SUR development as sequence of group-level state transi- tions based on specializing the Team Mental Model construct. Furthermore it proposes a novel group-level cognitive model as the main result of an analysis of data collected from the observation of an Agile software development team over a period of several months. The initial high-level application of the model shows it has promise for providing new insights into supporting SUR development

Titmice are a better indicator of bird density in Northern European than in Western European forests

Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.Population sizes of many birds are declining alarmingly and methods for estimating fluctuations in species’ abundances at a large spatial scale are needed. The possibility to derive indicators from the tendency of specific species to co-occur with others has been overlooked. Here, we tested whether the abundance of resident titmice can act as a general ecological indicator of forest bird density in European forests. Titmice species are easily identifiable and have a wide distribution, which makes them potentially useful ecological indicators. Migratory birds often use information on the density of resident birds, such as titmice, as a cue for habitat selection. Thus, the density of residents may potentially affect community dynamics. We examined spatio-temporal variation in titmouse abundance and total bird abundance, each measured as biomass, by using long-term citizen science data on breeding forest birds in Finland and France. We analyzed the variation in observed forest bird density (excluding titmice) in relation to titmouse abundance. In Finland, forest bird density linearly increased with titmouse abundance. In France, forest bird density nonlinearly increased with titmouse abundance, the association weakening toward high titmouse abundance. We then analyzed whether the abundance (measured as biomass) of random species sets could predict forest bird density better than titmouse abundance. Random species sets outperformed titmice as an indicator of forest bird density only in 4.4% and 24.2% of the random draws, in Finland and France, respectively. Overall, the results suggest that titmice could act as an indicator of bird density in Northern European forest bird communities, encouraging the use of titmice observations by even less-experienced observers in citizen science monitoring of general forest bird density.Peer reviewe