OBJECTIVE To assess the efficacy of modest non-financial incentives on immunisation rates in children aged 1-3 and to compare it with the effect of only improving the reliability of the supply of services. DESIGN Clustered randomised controlled study. SETTING Rural Rajasthan, India. PARTICIPANTS 1640 children aged 1-3 at end point. INTERVENTIONS 134 villages were randomised to one of th...

In recent years, news of ‘‘cancer villages” in the Huaihe River Basin filled front and back pages of newspapers and generated elevated concern among readers. This study aims to understand the relationship between the ‘‘cancer villages” and the ‘‘large cities” around them. A gravity model is constructed to analyze the correlation between ‘‘big cities” and ‘‘cancer villages” in terms of indices i...

Previous research into the religious life of Roma in Serbia has mostly been based on questionnaires and surveys of sociologists of religion on their religious (current connection to religion and church) and confessional (belonging to a religion) self-identification, on the ritual celebration of two religious-ethnic holidays: Vlasuljica (January 14, St. Basil) and Đurđevdan (May 6, St. George), ...

This study explores the relationships between forest cover change and the village resettlement and land planning policies implemented in Laos, which have led to the relocation of remote and dispersed populations into clustered villages with easier access to state services and market facilities. We used the Global Forest Cover Change (2000–2012) and the most recent Lao Agricultural Census (2011)...

OBJECTIVE To conduct the first rigorous evaluation of the long-term effect of the Comprehensive Rural Health Project on childhood mortality in rural Maharashtra. METHODS Background information and full birth histories were collected by conducting household surveys and interviewing women. Control villages resembling project villages in terms of population size were randomly selected from an ar...

The anaerobic biodegradability of domestic sewage for four Egyptian villages and four Egyptian cities was determined in batch experiments. The results showed that the biodegradability of the Egyptian-villages sewage (73%) was higher than that of the cities (66%). The higher biodegradability of the soluble COD of village sewage (69%) as compared to that of the cities (46%) was the reason for the...

In some areas of rural Africa, long-standing cultural traditions and beliefs may discourage parents from verbally engaging with their young children. This study assessed the effectiveness of a parenting program designed to encourage verbal engagement between caregivers and infants in Wolof-speaking villages in rural Senegal. Caregivers (n = 443) and their 4- to 31-month-old children were observ...

This paper attempts to identify patterns of female work participation in more than 578 thousand villages of India using the data mining approach. The analysis is based on an index of participation that has been developed for the purpose and takes into the consideration both the extent and the intensity of participation in productive activities. The analysis reveals that Indian villages can be g...

The main argument of this paper is that religious change caused by modifying supply in the religious market takes time due to intergenerational value change. Unlike previous research, this study suggests that not only do religious agents on the supply side need time to adjust, but that the time lag is probably even greater among individuals on the demand side of the religious market. Using time...