Surveys conducted in the context of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) programme are an important source of data on health of families in developing countries. Both at the national and international level, DHS surveys provide much-needed data on fertility and family planning, on mortality and nutrition, and on health services utilization. The use of uniform survey instruments allows detai...

Turkey has been experiencing significant fertility decline since the 1950s. Increasing mean ages at childbearing have accompanied this decline, thus studies regarding tempo effects are necessary for Turkey. The main aim of this study is to reveal the tempo distortions in recent period fertility in Turkey as a whole and for different sub-groups by using an adjustment procedure. A procedure by Bo...

In Nigeria, decades of protracted military rule deepened poverty and created a situation in which many children are undernourished. According to the last National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS, 2003), 29% of Nigerian children under five years are considered underweight. Today Nigeria is among the ten countries in the world with the largest number of underweight children, with an estimated...

In the course of demographic transitions (DTs), two large-scale trends become apparent: (i) the broadly positive association between wealth, status and fertility tends to reverse, and (ii) wealth inequalities increase and then temporarily decrease. We argue that these two broad patterns are linked, through a diversification of reproductive strategies that subsequently converge as populations co...

This is an introduction to a special issue on aspects of demographic aging in Asia. It provides "an overview of the issues related to the rapid increase in the number of elderly in some Asian countries. It describes how the articles contained in this special issue...demonstrate that the familial system of support for the elderly has persisted despite major social and economic change. It also...

BACKGROUND Of global concern is the decline in under five children mortality which has reversed in some countries in sub Saharan Africa (SSA) since the early 1990 s which could be due to disparities in access to preventive services including immunization. This paper is aimed at determining the trend in disparities in completion of immunization using Tanzania Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)...

OBJECTIVES To derive the best possible estimates of trends in age at first sex (AFS) among successive cohorts of Ugandan men and women based on all the data available from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and cohort studies in Masaka and Rakai districts. METHODS The datasets from the DHS, Masaka cohort and Rakai cohort were analysed separately. Survival analysis methods were used to e...