Suchergebnisse

Drawing on the author's extensive and varied research, this text provides readers with a summary of concepts and issues in several disciplines including economics, nutrition, psychology and public health in the hope of improving the design of food policies in the developed and developing world.

Summary.This paper models the proximate determinants of children born to over 13,000 Ethiopian women and of the women's stated preferences for additional births using the data from the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey 2000. Empirical models for the number of children born to women were estimated using Poisson and ordinal regressions. The results show the importance of variables such as maternal education for smaller family size, and that variables reflecting desired family size are strong predictors of the numbers of children born to women. Secondly, binary logistic models for dichotomous variables for women not wanting more children and if getting pregnant would be a 'big problem' showed non-linear effects of the surviving and 'ideal' number of children. Moreover, the results indicated a desire on the part of women to limit family size, especially as the number of surviving children increased. Probit models were estimated to address potential endogeneity of certain variables. Overall, the results indicated that counselling couples about small family size and increasing the utilization of health care services can lower fertility in Ethiopia.

SummaryThe rapid economic growth in China has been accompanied by increases in internal migration as well as marital dissolution. Using longitudinal data from China Health and Nutrition Surveys covering over 19,000 individuals during 1989–2011, this study modelled the inter-relationships between internal migration, divorce and individual well-being, tackling conceptual and methodological aspects such as the joint determination of variables. First, random effects probit models showed that the migration periods of husbands and wives significantly increased their respective chances of divorce. Second, results from dynamic random effects models for self-reported health showed different effects of separation periods for husbands and wives; divorce did not significantly lower health status. Third, dynamic models for systolic and diastolic blood pressures showed significant effects of migration durations of husbands and wives; men hadlowersystolic blood pressure following divorce thereby indicating beneficial effects for unhappily married couples. The implications of the findings are discussed.