Family Size and Educational Attainment in England and Wales

In this paper, we use linked census data from England and Wales to investigate whether having a large number of siblings leads to lower educational attainment. There is a large literature suggesting that with large sibship size, parental resources will be diluted and this, in turn, will lead to lower educational attainment. Using twin births and the sex composition of the sibling group as instrumental variables, we find that the evidence of a family size effect on educational attainment is rather uncertain. Similar results are obtained when we use occupational attainment as the dependent variable. We also demonstrate the confounding of birth order and family size effects, and show that an adjusted birth order index proposed by Booth and Kee provides an effective solution to this estimation problem

Changing migration rates in England and Wales over a 40-year period: Is mobility declining?

Research using data for the United States has pointed towards a long-term pattern of falling migration rates. Similar research in England and Wales has also found declining migration rates when observing all migrants. Using the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study (ONS LS), we study the patterns of migration observed over 10-year periods for persons in 10-year birth cohorts over each intercensal period from 1971–1981 through to 2001–2011. When the sample population is considered as a whole, the results from the LS are consistent with earlier findings: There has been a decade-on-decade decline in the migration rate as observed in longitudinal data. When disaggregated by cohort, it is apparent that this decline is not always observed for young adults, but it is consistently observed for those in their 30s and older, for whom each successive cohort has a lower migration rate than the previous one and also for whom there is a steady within-cohort decline in the migration rate over time. This is observed at both short and longer distances of move. Alternative results from successive censuses looking at migration observed for single years do not appear to confirm this decline in migration, although data collection and processing issues may be part of the explanation for this finding, and it is also the case that these data may be more subject to cyclical effects

Period-cohort migration intensities in England and Wales

The ONS Longitudinal Study is a linked sample of 1.1% of the population of England and Wales, with data from censuses in 1971 through to 2011. Comparison of usual residence data allows a ten-year transition period to be observed. Close to 14,000 people exist within this sample who have been present at all census points, and have migrated (within England and Wales) in each 10-year period, 1971-81 through to 2001-11; we refer to these people as 'highly mobile'. The paper looks at regional patterns of this sub-sample, and then focuses on period-cohort comparisons. We explore the relative propensities to migrate amongst these highly mobile persons, in order to provide a relatively long-term UK set of observations to compare with findings in some other countries of a reduced propensity for internal migration

Heart Rate Extraction from Abdominal Audio Signals

Abdominal sounds (ABS) have been traditionally used for assessing gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. However, the assessment requires a trained medical professional to perform multiple abdominal auscultation sessions, which is resource-intense and may fail to provide an accurate picture of patients' continuous GI wellbeing. This has generated a technological interest in developing wearables for continuous capture of ABS, which enables a fuller picture of patient's GI status to be obtained at reduced cost. This paper seeks to evaluate the feasibility of extracting heart rate (HR) from such ABS monitoring devices. The collection of HR directly from these devices would enable gathering vital signs alongside GI data without the need for additional wearable devices, providing further cost benefits and improving general usability. We utilised a dataset containing 104 hours of ABS audio, collected from the abdomen using an e-stethoscope, and electrocardiogram as ground truth. Our evaluation shows for the first time that we can successfully extract HR from audio collected from a wearable on the abdomen. As heart sounds collected from the abdomen suffer from significant noise from GI and respiratory tracts, we leverage wavelet denoising for improved heart beat detection. The mean absolute error of the algorithm for average HR is 3.4 BPM with mean directional error of -1.2 BPM over the whole dataset. A comparison to photoplethysmography-based wearable HR sensors shows that our approach exhibits comparable accuracy to consumer wrist-worn wearables for average and instantaneous heart rate.Comment: ICASSP 202

Multimorbidity as assessed by reporting of multiple causes of death: variations by period, sociodemographic characteristics and place of death among older decedents in England and Wales, 2001-2017.

Background Multimorbidity is common at older ages and is associated with disability, frailty and poor quality of life. Research using clinical databases and surveys has shown associations between multimorbidity and indicators of social disadvantage. Use of multiple coded death registration data has been proposed as an additional source which may also provide insights into quality of death certification. Methods We investigate trends in reporting multiple causes of death during 2001–2017 among decedents aged 65 years and over included in a census-based sample of 1% of the England and Wales population (Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study). Using Poisson regression analysis, we analyse variations in number of mentions of causes of death recorded by time period, place of death, age, sex and marital status at death and indicators of health status and individual and area socioeconomic disadvantage reported at the census prior to death. Results Number of mentions of causes recorded at death registration increased 2001–2017, increased with age, peaking among decedents aged 85–9 years, and was positively associated with indicators of prior disadvantage and poor health, although effects were small. Number of mentions was highest for hospital decedents and similar for those dying in care homes or their own homes. Conclusion Socioeconomic disadvantage, prior poor health, dying in hospital and older age—although not extreme old age—are associated with dying with more recorded conditions. Results may reflect both differences in multimorbidity at death and variations in quality of medical certification of death. Quality of death certification for decedents in care homes needs further investigation

Windrush migrants in the ONS Longitudinal Study

The ONS Longitudinal Study can be used to estimate the number of Windrush migrants in ways which go beyond the methods based solely on the most recent census, or on the Labour Force Survey. CeLSIUS estimate that in 2011 there were around 1,735 Windrush children who had entered the country (aged under 16) prior to 1971, and 3,744 migrants overall, who did not hold any passport