BACKGROUND This study used data from recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to examine the impact of short or long preceding birth intervals on neonatal and under-five mortality. In order to minimize the effect of selection issues, we examined child mortality outcomes of the same mother, comparing short or long interval births against births with what had previously been considered optimal...

The differences in rhizosphere nitrification activities between high- and low- fertility soils appear to be related to differences in dissolved oxygen concentrations in the soil, implying a relationship to differences in the radial oxygen loss (ROL) of rice roots in these soils. A miniaturised Clark-type oxygen microelectrode system was used to determine rice root ROL and the rhizosphere oxygen...

Environmental uncertainty alone can select for delayed reproduction; however, its relative role in the evolution of delayed reproduction across life histories is not known. Along a life-history spectrum from low-survival/high-fertility species to high-survival/low-fertility species, we show that the latter are more likely to evolve delayed reproduction if fertility varies over time. By contrast...

The present study examined women's attentional bias toward ornamental objects in relation to their menstrual phase as well as to motivations of intersexual courtship or intrasexual competition. In Experiment 1, 33 healthy heterosexual women were tested in a bias-assessment visual cuing task twice: once on a high-fertility day (during the ovulatory phase) and once on a low-fertility day (during ...

This study examines the relationship between family size and children's education in Bangladesh for two periods - 1982 with high fertility and 1996 with low fertility - using data from the Matlab Health and Demographic Surveillance System of the ICDDR,B: Centre for Health and Population Research. Children aged 8-17 years (27,448 in 1982 and 32,635 in 1996) were selected from households where th...

The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development placed issues of gender at the centre of discussion of population and development (United Nations 1995). The leading theme of the conference was that, in less developed countries, higher levels of gender equity are a necessary component in the achievement of lower fertility. In apparent contradiction with the 1994 ICPD, I have post...

Crossbred ewes (1/2 Dorset, 1/4 Rambouillet, and 1/4 Finnsheep) from a flock being selected for spring fertility, defined as ability to lamb following ram exposure in May and June in Virginia (37 degrees N latitude), were used to study the duration of the seasonal anestrus. In the first 3 yr of the study (1992, 1993, and 1995), mature ewes were divergently selected based on EBV for fertility, a...

BACKGROUND Gender equity theory in relation to fertility argues that very low fertility is the result of incoherence in the levels of gender equity in individually oriented social institutions and family-oriented social institutions. The salience of gender to the fertility transition is strong in theory but not as strong in specification of testable hypotheses, as has been pointed out in the li...

An important transition in the economic history of countries occurs when they move from a regime of low prosperity, high child mortality and high fertility to a state of high prosperity, low child mortality and low fertility. Researchers have proposed various theories to explain this demographic transition and its relation to economic growth. In this article, we test the validity of some of the...

Fertility transition in China deviates from the classical model in two ways. First, fertility decline in China was extraordinarily rapid with low level of socio-economic development; second, the change has been from a high fertility regime to a low and sex-selective pattern of childbearing. The two processes are directly the result from China’s family planning program, which is the most stringe...