Age heaping patterns in Mosaic data

This paper analyzes the extent and nature of age-misreporting in the Mosaic data, currently one of the largest historical census microdata infrastructures for continental Europe. We use demographic measures known as the age heaping indexes to explore regional, periodic and sex-specific patterns of age misreporting across 115 Mosaic regional datafiles, from Catalonia to Moscow, during Europe's demographic ancien régime and thereafter. The paper's second significant contribution is the comparison of Mosaic-based results to those derived from two other big census data projects—IPUMS and NAPP. Beyond this exploratory data analysis, we also investigate possible sources of variation in age heaping across Mosaic data by examining how it relates to variability in socioeconomic, institutional, and environmental conditions. Overall, our systematic inquiry into quality of age reporting in Mosaic consolidates the project's potentially transformative role in comparative historical family demography and suggests some avenues for future research.     

Mapping schools' NAPLAN results: a spatial inequality of school outcomes in Australia

This article identifies spatial dimensions of educational outcomes using maps of the 2016 Grade 5 reading results for Australia's National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy for all Australian schools. A geographical information system (GIS) was used to overlay schools' results onto suburbs' advantage or disadvantage to visualise spatial patterns. We then examined the extent to which school results “cluster” in socio‐economically advantaged and disadvantaged suburbs and considered the consistency of spatial patterns for results across major cities. That work illustrates both how GIS can foreground educational inequality and how “the spatial” is more than corollary for student socio‐economic status. Results show substantial differences between urban and remote areas and towns of different size. Maps of cities visualise spatial “clustering” patterns of school results, with most schools in advantaged suburbs having high results and almost no schools in disadvantaged suburbs having high results. Educational outcomes strongly align to local socio‐demographic characteristics, and parallel host communities’ levels of advantage or disadvantage. Differences between public and private schools are less significant than within‐sector differences for schools in advantaged or disadvantaged locales. Patterns in all cities are consistent—schools in advantaged suburbs predominantly have high results, whereas non‐government schools generally perform better than government schools in disadvantaged suburbs. Most concerning is the persistent and increasing trajectory of results in advantaged, and more so in disadvantaged suburbs, of all cities since the first National Assessment Program–Literacy and Numeracy in 2008. Ameliorating spatial inequality between primary schools is one of the greatest challenges for Australians.     

Union Army veterans,all grown up

This article overviews the research opportunities made possible by a National Institute on Aging-funded program project, Early Indicators, Intergenerational Processes, and Aging. Data collection began almost three decades ago on 40,000 soldiers from the Union Army in the U.S. Civil War. The sample contains extensive demographic, economic, and medical data from childhood to death. In recent years, a large sample of African-American soldiers and an oversampling of soldiers from major U.S. cities have been added. Hundreds of historical maps containing public health data have been geocoded to place soldiers and their family members in a geospatial context. With newly granted funding, thousands of veterans will be linked to the demographic information available from the census and vital records of their children.     

Production risk,inter-annual food storage by households and population-level consequences in seasonal prehistoric agrarian societies

Abstract

Using complementary behavioural and population ecological models, we explore the role of production risk, normal surplus and inter-annual food storage in the adaptations of societies dependent on seasonal agriculture. We find that (a) household-level, risk-sensitive adaption to unpredictable environmental variation in annual agricultural yields is a sufficient explanation for the origins of normal agrarian surplus and, consequently, of household-level incentives for inter-annual food storage; and, (b) at the population level, density-dependent Malthusian processes tightly constrain the circumstances under which this same mechanism can be effective in smoothing inter-annual fluctuations in household food availability. Greater environmental variation and higher levels of fixed set-asides such as seed requirements or transfer obligations to political authorities lead to more severe, periodic famines; however, outside of famine events, these same factors improve average population welfare by suppressing population density to levels at which Malthusian constraints have lessened impact. The combination of behavioural and population ecological modelling methods has broad and complementary potential for illustrating the dynamic properties of complex, coupled human–natural systems.     

Ethnic demography of western siberia At the end of the 20th century

This article presents data and analysis, summarizing the materials of the general censuses, mainly of 1989 and 2002. Special attention is paid to the dynamics of demographic composition and linguistic processes among the indigenous peoples of Western Siberia. The size and the distribution of 38 ethnic groups belonging to the multinational environment of the former USSR (with a size of not less than one thousand people) are presented for every region of Western Siberia (from the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District to the Altai Republic). Different patterns of distribution, clusters of territories with similar ethnic composition, shares of indigenous, migrant non-Russian, and ethnic Russian population in each region are reported. At the end of the 20th century, the most remote territories of the Far North (Yamal) and the mountainous region of the Altai show the greatest specifi city.     

Creating the 1831 Canadian Census Database

The 1831 census database is the newest addition to the series of 19th century Canadian census microdata available for social science research, thanks to a collaboration between the Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH) and FamilySearch. This article presents the work undertaken to prepare this database and the main challenges encountered in the course of this work. While the data extracted from the 1831 census are an invaluable tool for demographic research, particularly on account of the agricultural and industrial questions included in this census, cleaning these data have required particular attention to the age-sex-marital status tallies of the household co-residents. Additional efforts were devoted to integrating missing data for Montréal’s Notre-Dame parish and for other parishes.     

Perspectives on the Rise and Fall of Swedish Cardiac Epidemics

Morbidity and mortality in cardiovascular diseases (CVD) can be described as an ongoing epidemic, although a very protracted one, lasting more than 100 years. Cardiovascular diseasesstill top mortality rates in the world today, accounting for about 30% of all deaths around the globe. But it is in the industrialized world that CVD dominate, although differences are great among various regions. Myocardial infarctions are significantly more common in Sweden than in southern Europe, but less common than in Eastern Europe. The overall question concerns the consequences for health in areas on the road to a post-industrial society. Over the years a clearer link has become visible between lifestyle and health. In Sweden, infectious diseases diminished as result of rising living standards. At the same time cardiovascular diseases were beginning their upward phase, reaching a peak in the 1960s. Deaths due to CVD bring to light significant discrepancies related to socio-economic and cultural factors. A comparison of the Swedish twin cities Linköping and Norrköping show considerable differences in death rates in favour of Linköping, amounting to about 30% fewer in the 1920s with a tendency toward rising differences thereafter. A preliminary investigation of diagnoses has shown that links commonly made between health and socio-economic patterns need revision. The differences in cardiovascular morbidity show another pattern than was expected. It is obvious that the neighbourhood environments themselves have significance, and that the inequalities need additional research based on complementary explanatory models.     

Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater: Estimating fertility from subadult skeletons

Recent research interest has focused on the bioarchaeology of children. Although paleodemography is essential for accurate reconstructions of lifestyle and health in past populations, currently there is no published technique for estimating fertility and life expectancy at birth for skeletal populations in which adults are under‐enumerated. This paper provides a formula to predict Gross Reproductive Rate (GRR) from the proportion of young infants to subadults in a skeletal population. The formula was developed from 98 of Coale and Demeny's Female Model West Life Tables, which represented diverse fertility and mortality rates. The formula's accuracy was examined using independent samples from historical and archaeological cemeteries. Estimates of GRR from the subadult fertility formula were compared with estimates from Bocquet‐Appel and Masset's juvenile:adult ratio. Results indicate that the subadult fertility formula predicts GRR with consistent accuracy (R² = 0.98) and precision (± 1 offspring) in the model life tables, across diverse subadult age structures and demographic characteristics. The formula is useful for subadult populations with a proportion of perinates:subadults between 0.12 and 0.45. The adult component of the sample is not included in the analysis and thus the formula is similarly useful in cases where adults are under‐enumerated, or not. When applied to historical and archaeological populations, estimates for GRR are similar to previous estimates from the juvenile:adult ratio. Because crude birth rate and life expectancy at birth can be calculated from GRR using established fertility centred approaches to demography, the subadult fertility formula allows skeletal populations of diverse composition to be included in demographic research, essential for understanding of how mortality and fertility are affecting the morbidity profiles of subadult samples and for comparative bioarchaeological analyses. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consequences of Styles of Thinking: On the Relative and the Absolute in Archaeology at the End of the Twentieth Century

The article discusses relativism and absolutism in archaeology on the threshold of a new millennium. The point of departure is Nationalism, Po-­litics, and the Practice of Archaeology and a 'consensus document' from the Lampeter Archaeological Workshop advocating a relativist attitude in archaeology. The author considers that relativism is closely related to indifference and is far from as positive as it is represented. On the basis of Feyerabend's concept of Denkstil (style of thinking) and the fondness of 'post-processual' archaeologists for manifestos, the article considers archaeology under Maoism in China, and whether Ian Hodder's appeal for an archaeology for all sheds light on views of professionalism and the training of archaeologists.     

Modeling social interaction: Marital miscegenation in colonial Spanish America

Abstract

In this article, the author constructs new life tables for the white population of the United States in each decade between 1790 and 1900. Drawing from several recent studies, he suggests best estimates of life expectancy at age 20 for each decade. These estimates are fitted to new standards derived from the 1900–1902 rural and 1900–1902 overall death registration area life tables using a two-parameter logit model with fixed slope. The resulting decennial life tables more accurately represent sex- and age-specific mortality rates while capturing known mortality trends.