UNLABELLED Birth weight can be a predictor of maternal health issues related to nutrition and environmental contaminants. Total hair mercury (HHg) concentration was studied as an indicator of both fish consumption and methylmercury exposure in mothers (and newborns) living in selected low income areas of the Madeira River basin, Amazonia, Brazil. This cohort study (n = 1,433) consisted of tradi...

Background. The multiplicity and diversity of daily life physical activities may have harmful effects on body health. The cervical and lumbar regions of the body are more vulnerable to functional problems resulting from daily lifestyles and activities. Objectives. The present study aims to develop a special program of therapeutic rehabilitation exercises that can relieve cervical and lumbar pa...

rural industrialization or establishing industries in rural area as an important and most prevalent procedure for non agricultural economic development is discussed in this article. lack of main agricultural production parameters like water resource, rich and suitable soil, in these areas, in spite of plenty of manpower, directs the situation to day by day immigration rate from rural areas. ind...

The past decade has seen a number of studies of how the poverty incidence (the percentage of families below the poverty line) of certain demographic groups changes in response to economic growth. In the pre!3ent study, the responsiveness of family income to regional economic growth is examined for a sample of rural and rural poor Wisconsin families with nonaged, nQndisabled heads. Ordinary leas...

Earthquakes happen suddenly and are immensely destructive. They not only destroy entire societal production and infrastructure systems but also seriously interfere with daily life and reduce opportunities to earn income in earthquake-affected areas. In this paper, using the Ning’er Ms 6.4 earthquake in 2007 as an example, we analyzed the livelihood vulnerability of rural households in Ning’er C...

BACKGROUND Many countries are developing health financing mechanisms to pursue the goal of universal coverage. In China, a rural health insurance system entitled New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) is being developed since 2003. Although there is concern about whether the NCMS will influence the serious situation of inequity in health service utilization in rural China, there is only limited ...

We use three conventional inequality indices—the Gini, the coefficient of variation of income, and the relative mean deviation of income—and the Atkinson index to examine the effect of income tax rates, the minimum wage, and all the major government welfare and transfer programs on the evolution of income inequality for rural and urban areas by state from 1981-1997. We find that these programs ...