Suchergebnisse

The author sees the current moment as an opportunity to collaborate with other disciplines to tackle social policy, climate change, and political economy discourses.

The relatively high levels of mortality in Pakistan compared
to the rest of the Asian region, particularly countries like Sri Lanka
and China, have kept population growth rates in check. However, on the
other hand, persistently high levels of infant-child mortality are more
than often argued to be a strong factor working against a fertility
decline in Pakistan. It is without doubt that bringing about further
mortality declines is most definitely desirable and government policy
has addressed this issue. However, the major thrust of official effort
in the past few decades has been towards the curtailment of high
fertility levels.

Rapid population growth and high levels of poverty continue to
be outstanding features of the South Asian region. It is often
acknowledged, both implicitly and explicitly, that these two features
have close linkages especially in the case of South Asia. This book
addresses this very issue through five case studies of Rural Bihar,
Rural Pakistan, India, Rural Bangladesh, and Nepal. The book makes an
interesting contribution to the literature on population in South Asia.
In particular, it has a strong empirical base. However, most of the
enquiries, as is quite understandable, are limited by the type of data
typically collected in cross-sectional sample surveys. Their limitations
are pointed out by the authors themselves. Each chapter makes a
significant contribution in its own area and the country-specific
results are interesting. In Chapter 2, Rodgers, Gupta, Sharma and
Sharma, examine, as their title says, "Demographic Patterns and Poverty
among Households in Rural Bihar". The associations between family
planning, fertility, child mortality, and incomerelated measures are
studied: the relationship between economic variables and fertility is
found to be weak; mortality and poverty are more directly related; and
the conclusion, therefore, is that there is no evidence to warrant the
conclusion that reducing poverty (even if a desirable objective in
itself) would reduce fertility.

This book is essentially the report of a survey carried out to
investigate the basic needs of Katchi Abadi populations in Lahore city.
Given that about 25-30 percent of Pakistan 's population is estimated 10
be Jiving in such squatter settlements and with the ever increasing
migration to urban areas, this proportion is only likely to rise. Thus,
this research is most invaluable for urban planners and demographers in
particular, and social scientists in general. Whereas previous studies
have concentrated on examining levels of urban and rural poverty by
using macro-level data, this study is based on an originally designed
empirical investigation of low income areas. The major aim of the
research seems to be the question of whether or not the fruits of
development are in fact "trickling down" to the poorest classes in the
urban areas. By implication, the answer if in the positive, means that
recent development plans in Pakistan have been successful, if negative ,
the answer draws attention to the failure of development planning to
carry out redistributive justice.

SummaryLife table analysis is applied to data from the Pakistan Fertility Survey (1975) to examine the effects on birth spacing of a number of socioeconomic variables. Women of more modern backgrounds seem to space their families more closely, but differ little in achieved family size from the more traditional groups. Important factors are age at marriage, age at first birth, province of residence, and whether the woman had ever used contraception. Multivariate analysis taking into account interaction between variables shows that education, urban-rural residence, and province exert independent effects, and so does the cohort of the mother. But the variable with the strongest effect on length of interval, other than that from marriage to first birth, is duration of breast-feeding.

The issue of sex differentials in mortality received attention
as early as 1901 when the Super in tendents of Census remarked on the
unusually high sex ratios found in the Indian subcontinent, particularly
in the North West Census of India 1901. More thorough investigations of
the phenomenon were begun in the Sixties when detailed examinations of
sex ratios in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh attributed their excess to
higher female mortality (Vi:iaria (1967); Rukanuddin (1967); Bangladesh
Retrospective Survey of Fertility and Mortality (BRSFM) (1977)]. A
partial explanation was also found in the omission of female members of
households from census counts because of culturally based reluctance to
give out names of female household members to enumerators who were
strangers plus understating of girls' ages as some form of 'protection'
of nubile daughters from the outside world. Most recently, the topic of
female disadvantage in mortality at almost all ages in the South Asian
subcontinent has received renewed and urgent attention both in research
and in the press. The alarm is due to the fact that, despite falls in
mortality levels, sex differentials in disfavor of females persist in
this region. Also, this remains a peculiarity of the region: whereas
females suffer higher female mortality at some ages in some countries,
generally female mortality is found to be lower than that of males
(lDpez and Ruzicka 1983).

Here we seek explanations for the relatively high levels of
infant mortality in Pakistan compared with those in other countries
having middle-level per capita incomes. Data are mainly drawn from the
birth histories of 9810 ever-married women interviewed in the Population
Labour Force and Migration Survey of 1979. The empirical evidence points
to childbearing and childrearing practices, such as spacing, to be more
important determinants of mortality than economic factors. Availability
of health care is also an important determinant of mortality but
parents' propensity to avail themselves of it may be more critical to
child survival.

SummaryData from reproductive histories collected in the Population, Labour Force and Migration Survey of 1979 are used to analyse trends and differentials in infant and child mortality in Pakistan. Comparisons with the Pakistan Fertility Survey findings are also presented. Whereas levels differ substantially across the two surveys, trends and differentials are generally similar. Infant–child mortality seems to have declined until the mid-1960s, stabilized for some years and even risen slightly in the latest period of the two surveys.Neonatal mortality is responsible for a high proportion of deaths under age 1 and is particularly high for first order births and children born to very young or very old mothers. Higher infant and childhood mortality are also related to these factors and also to a shorter preceding birth interval, the early death of the preceding child and sex of the child. Education of mother and residence were also found to be critical determinants of infant and child mortality.

The study explores the relationship between female education
and fertility in Pakistan and is based on data from the Pakistan
Fertility Survey 1975. Only slight differentials were identified between
women with no education and those who had primary or less schooling.
However, women with more than primary education had notably lower
fertility. Also the role of the intermediate variables such as
proportions married, length of breast feeding and contraceptive use had
significant associations with female education.

This paper is concerned with identifying differentials in
levels and patterns of urban and rural fertility in Pakistan, based on
Pakistan Fertility Survey data. Findings show that there are marginal
differences in the over-all levels of fertility in the two areas.
However, younger urban women are reproducing at a higher rate than rural
counterparts, whereas older urban women use relatively more
contraception and have lower fertility than older rural women.

The objective of this paper is to provide some estimates of
the length of working life for males in Pakistan, using the more
recently available data. The length of working life is defined as the
average length of time for which a cohort can expect to remain in the
labour force i.e. either actively employed or seeking employment. This
measure is, determined by the levels of age-specific mortality of a
hypothetical cohort and its levels of age-specific labour force
participation. Therefore an improvement in mortality would tend to
increase the length of economically active life and its deterioration
would tend to shorten it. Other factors which influence the age-specific
labour force participation and age-specific mortality rates are the
indirect determinants of this measure. For example, improvements in
health and medical facilities may reduce the incidence of premature
retirements caused by physical ailments or disorders. Also, migration,
nuptiality, fertility and school attendance rates may influence labour
force participation rates and thereby affect the length of working
life.

The book covers a wide field, touching on almost all aspects
of popula¬tion change on a world-wide scale. It discusses, using world
and country data, the relationships between demographic and
socio-economic variables, and elaborates on" their relative importance
in the determination of population problems which confront the world as
a whole and nations individually. Policies designed to alleviate these
problems are discussed with an emphasis on those related to population
control. The first chapter is entitled "Population Growth: Past and
Prospective" and reviews the various parameters associated with
population change in the past and in the future. It touches upon the
concept of a stable population in order to show the elements which cause
a population to change (i.e. remove it from its stable condition). The
main elements of change, population growth, migration, mortality and
natality are discussed individually. The chapter is concluded by a
description of the main differences in these elements and other
socio-economic conditions as they exist in the less-developed and
developed countries.