Biodemography and Social Biology

Minimum acceptable diet (MAD) that combines minimum dietary diversity (MDD) and minimum meal frequency (MMF) is one of the eight core indicators for assessing infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices for children aged 6-23 months. With low MAD, young children and infants are more susceptible to undernutrition. The study assesses the prevalence and predictors of MAD among tribal children aged 6-23 months in India. Descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate analyzes were performed on data from 6326 tribal children of the National Family Health Survey (2019-21)...

Despite many discussions on the impacts of natural disasters on fertility outcomes, their implications for fertility preferences as a mechanism remain unexplored. This study proposes that natural disasters could promote fertility preferences by reinforcing traditional values. The empirical analysis relies on a post-tsunami longitudinal survey of individuals in the provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra in Indonesia frankenberg2020study. Out of the 28,376 survey respondents, our sample considers around 10,700 individuals aged 15 or more, whose responses are available for the variables used in the estimation...

Biomarkers in population health research serve as indicators of incremental physiological deterioration and contribute to our understanding of mechanisms through which social disparities in health unfold over time. Yet, few population-based studies incorporate biomarkers of aging in early midlife, when disease risks may emerge and progress across the life course. We describe the distributions of several biomarkers of inflammation and neurodegeneration and their variation by sociodemographic characteristics using blood samples collected during Wave V of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (ages 33-44 years)...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The medical literature has shown that populations under high stress have a lower sex ratio at birth (i.e. number of males for every 100 females). In this paper, I examine the relationship between income, as a source of economic stress, and the sex ratio at a subnational level for the 1895-2010 period. For this, I use census microdata from Argentina -a developing country that experienced rapid growth at the end of the 19th century and stagnated in recent decades- and I estimate from a two-way fixed effects model that exploits the wide temporal and geographic variability in income...

Numerous studies have demonstrated the negative impact of severe economic shocks (such as those associated with wars) on the growth of children and adolescents. Individuals exposed to these shocks during their developmental years exhibited shorter average heights compared to both previous and subsequent generations. Anthropometric research has highlighted the sensitivity of the height variable in understanding the biological well-being of children and adolescents. However, little attention has been paid to the evolution of other anthropometric variables...

Consanguineous marriage is still a customary social phenomenon in Arab-Muslim communities. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of consanguineous marriages in the Algerian population and to identify the socio-economic determinants associated with the practice of this form of union. This is a descriptive cross-sectional study included data for 21141 ever-married women aged 15-49 years, from the MICS6 Algeria (Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey database), conducted in 2019. Using a logistic regression model, we assessed the influence of socio-economic and geographical determinants on the practice of consanguineous marriages...

This paper reports child mortality and associated factors among tribal (indigenous) populations from a South Indian district. In India, 104 million people belonged to 705 tribal groups, constituting 8.6% of India's population. Of the 705 tribal groups, 75 were classified as particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTG). The present study aims to report the under-five child mortality among the tribal (both PVTG and non-PVTG) population in Visakhapatnam district, a district with a higher concentration of tribes in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Multiple-cause-of-death data have not yet been applied to the study of racial/ethnic differences in causal chains of events leading to death, nor they have been used to examine racial/ethnic disparities in cause-of-death certification. We use publicly available 2019 US death certificate data to reassemble chains of morbid events leading to death. From them, we construct and analyze directed multiple cause of death networks by race and sex of deaths aged 60+. Three perspectives to measure disparities are employed: (i) relative prevalence of cause-of-death-pairs, (ii) strength of associations between diseases, (iii) similarities in transition matrices...

This study assessed the knowledge, beliefs, and hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccination among medical (MS) and nonmedical students (NMS) in Punjab, Pakistan. An online cross-sectional survey was conducted by enrolling 624 MS and 476 NMS in the largest province of Pakistan, i.e ., Punjab. Chi-square tests were used to determine significant frequency distributions, and logistic regression to determine associations. The majority of students, males and females, were between 18-25 years of age and had good self-reported health...

In response to the population aging, on May 31, 2021, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) proposed the policy that a couple can have three children and rolled out more supportive measures to further optimize fertility policies, which is another major initiative following the universal two-child policy introduced in November 2015. Currently, a series of population policy innovations have aroused great attractions among the public and triggered a hot debating on the Internet...

Loneliness is linked to declining physical health across cardiovascular, inflammatory, metabolic, and cognitive domains. As a result, loneliness is increasingly being recognized as a public health threat, though the mechanisms that have been studied do not yet explain all loneliness-related health risk. Potential mechanisms include loneliness having 1.) direct, causal impacts on health, possibly maintained by epigenetic modification, 2.) indirect effects mediated through health-limiting behaviors, and 3.) artifactual associations perhaps related to genetic overlap and reverse causation...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Unintended pregnancy poses significant health risks for mothers, often leading to induced abortions. Understanding fertility is crucial when it comes to predicting the likelihood of unintended pregnancy. This study employed a quantitative research approach, utilizing a survey method. The survey was conducted in 2022 and involved 1065 married women aged 15-49 residing in Shiraz. The data collection process involved the administration of a standardized questionnaire. The sampling process utilized a combination of multi-stage classification and systematic random methods...

The COVID-19 pandemic and its social, economic, and health implications have generally reduced women's fertility intentions in different countries. In this article, we aimed to review studies of the impact of COVID-19 infection on women's fertility intentions and interventions to provide a theoretical basis and practical benchmark for the development of effective intervention strategies in China, which lifted its zero COVID system in early December 2022.

In contemporary societies, social status - especially income - is one of the most important determinants of ever marrying among men. Using U.S. census data, we estimated the importance of income for ever marrying among men and women, analyzing birth cohorts from 1890 to 1973. We examined individuals between the ages of 45 and 55, a total of 3.5 million men and 3.6 million women. We find that for men, the importance of income in predicting ever being married increased steadily over time. Income predicted only 2...

The article presents the results of a study of chromosomal mutations in residents living in the Aral Sea disaster zone. The present study was designed to evaluate the impact of the combined effect of a chemical mutagen (nickel) and bacterial microflora on the level of chromosomal aberrations (CA) in peripheral blood lymphocytes. This study used classical methods of cell cultivation, methods for determining chromosomal aberrations, a cytomorphological method for assessing epithelial cells, and an atomic absorption method for determining trace elements in the blood...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Our research fills a critical gap in the depression literature by utilizing a life course perspective to examine gender-gene interactions in association with depression trajectories over time. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we estimated multi-level negative binomial and logistic mixed models to analyze gender-specific trajectories of depressive symptoms (CESD-8) and potential clinical depression risk from middle to late adulthood in relation to gender-by-polygenic-risk (PRS) interactions. We found increasingly greater female-male gaps in the CESD-8 scale and a higher probability of clinical depression risk with increasing polygenic risk scores...