BACKGROUND Recent steep declines in child mortality have been attributed in part to increased use of contraceptives and the resulting change in fertility behaviour, including an increase in the time between births. Previous observational studies have documented strong associations between short birth spacing and an increase in the risk of neonatal, infant, and under-five mortality, compared to ...

Objective : 1) To find out which type of contraceptive methods were practiced before the present pregnancy. 2) What were the reasons for discontinuation of contraceptive methods in case of acceptors? 3) What are the reasons for not accepting contraceptive methods? 4) What is the relation between contraceptive method acceptors and non-acceptors and birth order? 5) What is the role of birth order...

BACKGROUND Preterm birth is a common cause of death in newborns and may result from many determinants, but evidence for the socioeconomic and environmental determinants of preterm birth in Tibetan women of childbearing age is limited. The aim of this study was to understand the current status of preterm birth in native Tibetan women and investigate the socioeconomic and environmental determinan...

Do Population Control Policies Induce More Human Capital Investment? Twins, Birthweight, and China's 'One Child' Policy In this paper we use a new data set describing households with and without twin children in China to quantify the trade-off between the quality and quantity of children using the incidence of twins that for the first time takes into account effects associated with the lower bi...

OBJECTIVE To assess how changes in socioeconomic and public health determinants may have contributed to the reduction in stunting prevalence seen among Cambodian children from 2000 to 2010. METHODS A nationally representative sample of 10 366 children younger than 5 years was obtained from pooled data of cross-sectional surveys conducted in Cambodia in 2000, 2005, and 2010. The authors used a...