Studies on spatial fertility differentials in sub-Sahara Africa normally treat the rural sector as a single and uniform geographical entity. This approach, unfortunately, tends to mask differences, which may exist between components of the rural sub-sectors. This empirical study, based on both quantitative analyses and participatory methodologies, has stratified one rural district in southweste...

The world is rapidly converging towards lower fertility: in 2020, countries with a total fertility rate of less than 2.25 will encompass more three-quarters the population. This implies that determinants childbearing be increasingly similar high-income and middle-income regions world. In this article, I discuss economic demography relation to levels childbearing. How do different societies dist...

Background & aim: Thecurrent population of the world is seven billion, and developing countries account for its 97%. Approximately 210 million pregnancies annually occur worldwide and 75-80 million of them are reported to be unintended. Multiple factors can contribute to unintended pregnancy, which need to be assessed to design interventions reducing the incidence of unintended pregnancies.This...

BACKGROUND Factors influencing fertility desires among HIV-infected individuals remain poorly understood. With new recommendations for universal HIV treatment and increasing antiretroviral therapy (ART) access, we sought to evaluate how access to early ART influences fertility desires among HIV-infected ART-naïve women. METHODS Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with a select ...

Costs of defense are thought to maintain genetic variations in the expression of defense within plant populations. As with many plant species, aspen exhibits considerable variation in allocation to secondary metabolites. This study examined the independent and interactive effects of genotype, soil fertility and belowground competition on defensive chemistry and growth in trembling aspen (Populu...

• The connections between poverty and reproductive ill health, as expressed through high fertility and perinatal mortality, are multidimensional. Conceptually, poverty is both a determinant and a consequence of reproductive ill health, either directly or through a series of proximate determinants. The links between poverty, low educational attainment, high fertility, and poor child and maternal...

This article presents a conceptual framework for the study of the distribution and determinants of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in populations, by combining demographic and epidemiological approaches. The proximate-determinants framework has been applied extensively in the study of fertility and child survival in developing countries. Key to the framework is the identification o...

The author critiques a paper by Zeba A. Sathar concerning the relationship between poverty and the infant mortality rate in Pakistan. The focus is on the socioeconomic determinants of fertility decline and policy implications. A reply by Sathar is included (pp. 258-9).

ity of a beef operation is the percentage of the calf crop weaned, which, in turn, is determined mainly by the number of cows bred during the breeding season. The herd bull influences overall herd fertility more than any other single animal. Because the bull also supplies half of the genetics to all of the calves he sires, bull selection can be the most powerful method of genetic improvement in...

The deep drop of the fertility rate in Italy to among the lowest in the world challenges contemporary theories of childbearing and family building. Among high-income countries, Italy was presumed to have characteristics of family values and female labor force participation that would favor higher fertility than its European neighbors to the north. We test competing economic and cultural explana...