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Higher mortality rates among males are a common occurrence across different cultures and countries. The causes of this higher mortality can be biological as well as behavioural in nature. The biological evidence applies across all nations and communities, but the behavioural causes, arising from the decision processes and communication strategies of individuals, will necessarily have cultural and environmental dimensions that change with time. This study examines gender disparities in mortality across ethnicity and time in Malaysia. The study shows that there is a consistent gender differential across time but it has widened for the Malays and the Indians and narrowed for the Chinese. Most importantly, it has widened considerably for young adults. Analysis of the leading causes of death show that young adult males are more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviour, and that the related causes and the extent of such causes vary across the ethnic groups.

Under the umbrella of the ‘gender revolution’, scholars have theorized that greater gender-egalitarianism will lead to higher fertility in low-fertility countries, paying particular attention to how men and women perform their roles in the public and the private spheres. This relationship between fertility and gender-role attitudes has been the object of vibrant debates in Europe and other Western societies but less often in other world regions. We used data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) for the four available Latin American countries -Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela- to explore the link between men’s and women’s gender-role attitudes and their fertility ideals. Overall, our results suggest not only that people with more egalitarian gender-role attitudes have a lower ideal number of children than less egalitarian individuals, even when controlling for other sociodemographic and economic factors, but also that, in general, women hold lower fertility ideals than men. These results lead to think that, if taking the gender revolution as a model, Latin America would be experiencing the first stage of the process. Yet, we found evidence for a different pace across Latin American subregions. We also conclude that the analysis is slightly sensitive to the gender-role measures used.

Life-course transitions are important drivers of mobility, resulting in a concentration of migration at young adult ages. While there is increasing evidence of cross-national variations in the ages at which young adults move, the relative importance of various key life-course transitions in shaping these differences remains poorly understood. Prior studies typically focus on a single country and examine the influence of a single transition on migration, independently from other life-course events. To better understand the determinants of cross-national variations in migration ages, this paper analyses for Australia and Great Britain the joint influence of five key life-course transitions on migration: (1) higher education entry, (2) labour force entry, (3) partnering, (4) marriage and (5) family formation. We first characterise the age profile of short- and long-distance migration and the age profile of life-course transitions. We then use event-history analysis to establish the relative importance of each life-course transitions on migration. Our results show that the age structure and the relative importance of life-course transitions vary across countries, shaping differences in migration age patterns. In Great Britain, the strong association of migration with multiple transitions explains the concentration of migration at young adult ages, which is further amplified by the age-concentration and alignment of multiple transitions at similar ages. By contrast in Australia a weaker influence of life-course transitions on migration, combined with a dispersion of entry into higher education across a wide age range, contribute to a protracted migration age profile. Comparison by distance moved reveals further differences in the mix of transitions driving migration in each country, confirming the impact of the life-course in shaping migration age patterns.

Despite the potential for government employment policies both to encourage and preclude migration among the Aboriginal workforce, little is known about the impacts of such policies. This paper seeks to construct a base line for identifying these impacts by establishing the spatial structure of labour migration among the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population. It makes use of 1986 Census data to describe the volume and pattern of net and gross flows of working-age Aborigines and Islanders through the national settlement system, distinguishing between movements in remote and closely settled parts of the country. Full determination of the links between policy and migration flows awaits comparison with 1991 Census results.

This paper examines the childbearing behaviour of Polish migrant women and their descendants in Sweden. Also considering stayers in the country of origin, we rely on a country-of-origin and country-of-destination approach in a careful examination regarding the relevance of three hypotheses on migrant fertility: the socialisation, selection, and adaptation hypotheses. We analyse the transitions to first and second births based on a piecewise exponential model, using Swedish register data and the Polish Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) first wave. The results support the socialisation hypothesis, as the Polish stayers and the first-generation Polish migrants have their first child at younger ages and are less likely to remain childless than the other groups but are also more likely to not proceed to a second child, unlike the Swedish natives and the second generation. We find partial support for the selection hypothesis. Descriptively, we observe signs of selection into migration based on education, cohort, and marital status. Additionally, our study shows that the impact of marriage varies between stayers and migrants, in the first-birth transition, suggesting selection into migration when it comes to unobserved characteristics as well. The adaptation hypothesis is also supported, as the fertility behaviour of the second generation more closely resembles that of the Swedish natives than that of the first generation and differs more from that of the Polish stayers in terms of both quantum and timing of the first and second births.

Aboriginal migration to the cities is frequently assumed to be adding to the population of urban Aborigines. An analysis of actual patterns of Aboriginal migration to the large Australian cities (major urban areas), using data from the 1981 and 1986 Australian Censuses, shows that the major urban areas of New South Wales and Victoria were actually losing Aboriginal population through net migration throughout the period 1976 to 1986. At both inter-State level and country-to-city lev/el, any Aboriginal migration flow in one direction tends to be almost cancelled out by a flow of similar size in the opposite direction. However, there are definite age-specific patterns. In particular, there is movement of young single adults to the cities, often counterbalanced by migration of somewhat older adults with their children to the country. Aboriginal migrants have higher levels of labour-force participation than equivalent categories of non-migrants.

A cohort component projection of local populations based on sex and single year of age offers great value for planning local services, but demands data beyond the detail available. Local fertility, mortality and migration schedules by age and sex must be estimated sensitively to local variation if the results are to be of greater value than simpler methods of projection. Two approaches are compared, using data for the recent past: (a) direct estimation of local area age-specific schedules of fertility, mortality and migration based on data available to the national statistical agency; (b) graduation of national schedules using only local area population estimates by age, total numbers of births, and total numbers of deaths; age-specific migration is indirectly estimated from successive population estimates. These two approaches are compared with a projection using the same rates for each area. The three projections have been implemented for electoral wards in the Fife local government area of Scotland, using the flexible framework provided by POPGROUP software. Persuasive local population projections based on standard data for standard areas are feasible without the regular publication of migration flows.

Modern demographic and nutritional transitions have been implicated in global epidemiological transitions intensifying over the last 60 years. These transitions include steadily declining fertility rates, improving nutritional indicators, and increasing incidence rates of chronic diseases such as breast cancer. This research draws on the well established pathways linking individual reproductive and nutritional profiles to breast cancer risk, in order to test the links among demographic, nutritional, and epidemiological transitions on a global scale. We propose two hypotheses that test the reproductive and nutritional pathways that are suggested to increase breast cancer risk at the population level. We use total fertility rate (TFR) to test the reproductive behaviour hypothesis, and we use average height and the percentage of the population that is overweight for the nutritional hypothesis; these indicators are compared to breast cancer incidence rates for 2008. Accounting for national wealth and expenditures on healthcare, we found that both hypotheses were significantly associated with breast cancer incidence, although TFR appears to have a more consistent association with incidence. Drawing on our regression model, we explain trends in breast cancer incidence in selected countries, as well as making predictions about shifting breast cancer incidence rates over the next several decades. These data suggest that greater attention should be paid to the unintended health consequences of transitions that are largely considered to bring improvements in quality of life. Our findings suggest that greater investments in screening and treatment are particularly needed in regions undergoing transitions in fertility rates, particularly those areas experiencing super-low fertility.