The idea that trade-offs between offspring quantity and quality shape reproductive behaviour has long been central to economic perspectives on fertility. It also has a parallel and richer theoretical foundation in evolutionary ecology. We review the application of the quantity-quality trade-off concept to human reproduction, emphasizing distinctions between clutch size and lifetime fertility, a...

Title: Factors associated with infants' and young children's (6-23 months) dietary diversity in Pakistan: Evidence from the Demographic and Health Survey 2012-13 Authors: Sarosh Iqbal ([email protected]) Rubeena Zakar ([email protected]) Muhammad Zakar ([email protected]) Florian Fischer ([email protected]) Version: 1 Date: 04 May 2017 Author’s response to reviews: AUTHORS RE...

CONTEXT The persistent low contraceptive use and high fertility in Nigeria despite improvements in educational achievements calls for an examination of the role of factors, which may moderate the use of modern contraception. This article explores the influence of sexual autonomy on the use of modern contraceptive methods among women and its relative importance compared with other, more traditio...

BACKGROUND Hydatidosis, as the most important zoonotic parasitic disease in Iran, has posed many health and economic losses. This study was conducted to investigate the demographic characteristics of hydatid cyst surgeries in hospitals of East Azerbaijan Province, Northwest of Iran. METHODS Demographic characteristics of all patients with hydatid cyst surgery in hospitals of the province, dur...

Résumé Abstract Fertility remains higher and contraceptive levels are substantially lower in Sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere in the developing world. In this paper we use information on individuals and couples provided in recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS, fifth wave) undertaken in Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, and Zambia. We use bivariate and multivariate techniques to examine the deter...

OBJECTIVE To assess whether the strategy of "a midwife in every village" in Indonesia achieved its aim of increasing professional delivery care for the poorest women. METHODS Using pooled Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data from 1986-2002, we examined trends in the percentage of births attended by a health professional and deliveries via caesarean section. We tested for effects of the e...

Reproductive health surveys often face difficulties in measuring age and durations. Heaping is the phenomenon that certain dates, ages or durations are overor underrepresented. Following the calendar method used in several Demographic and Health Surveys, the current research proposes the use of a local timepath calendar, based on time perceptions of women in South India. The objective of the ca...

Obesity and overweight are spreading fast in developing countries, and have reached world record levels in some of them. Capturing the size, patterns and trends of the problem has, however, been severely hampered by the lack of comparable data in low and middle income countries. We seek to begin to fill this gap by testing several hypotheses on the determinants/correlates of overweight among wo...

The causes of large variation in the sizes of HIV epidemics among countries in sub-Saharan Africa are not well understood. Here we assess the potential roles of late age at marriage and a long period of premarital sexual activity as population risk factors, using ecological data from 33 sub-Saharan African countries and with individual-level data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in Ken...