Is technical demography becoming less relevant? two decade review of published articles in selected demography journals

Background: In this paper, we reviewed development in the field of technical demography and empirically demonstrate that there has been a decline in the proportion of technical demographic studies published in the last two decades. Methods: All original articles published in nine demographic journals from Africa, Europe, Australia, Canada and United States were reviewed. We derived yearly aggregate for total number of articles and number of technical demographic papers from 1994 to 2015. We illustrated the trends in the proportion of technical demographic studies in a graph and also estimated the annual rate of decline using least square regression techniques. Results: A total of 4091 studies were published in 465 issues of the selected journals between 1994 and 2015 of which 371 (9.0%) were related to technical demography. The proportion of technical demographic papers declined gradually at an annual rate of 0.42% (CI= 0.29-0.62) between 1994 (12.0%) and 2015 (10.0%). Conclusion: Technical demography need to be strengthened in order to provide the critical data and evidence required to objectively monitor the post-2015 development goals

Ecological correlates of multiple sexual partnerships among adolescents and young adults in urban Cape Town: a cumulative risk factor approach

Studies in South Africa have reported unsafe levels of risky sexual behaviors among adolescents and young adults, with the country reporting the highest burden of HIV/AIDS globally, as well as a high rate of teenage pregnancy. While determinants of risky sexual behaviours have been investigated for factors occurring at the individual and household levels, not fully explored in the literature is the effect of community level factors. Furthermore, it is unclear whether risk factors occurring within the ecology of adolescents and young adults act cumulatively to influence their sexual practices. This article aims to address this knowledge gap using a case study of the Cape Area Panel Study of adolescents and young adults in urban Cape Town, South Africa. The ecological framework was adopted to guide the selection of risk factors at the individual, household, and community levels. Multivariate linear discriminant function analyses were used to select significant risk factors for multiple sexual partnerships and used to produce risk indices for the respondents. The cumulative risk approach was applied to test whether significant risk factors acted cumulatively. Findings point to the importance of ecological factors in influencing outcomes of multiple sexual partnerships among respondents and further demonstrate that ecological risk factors may act cumulatively. These findings are important for South Africa that is grappling with teenage pregnancy and disproportionate HIV epidemic among the youth

Linkages between Autonomy; Poverty and Contraceptive Use in two Sub-Saharan African Countries

The paper presents the interaction effect of poverty-wealth status and autonomy on modern contraceptive use in Nigeria and Namibia with a view to examining whether poor women with less autonomy are less likely to use modern contraception than other women. A weighted sample of 3;451 currently married women in 2006-07 Namibia Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and 23;578 in 2008 Nigeria (DHS) are used in the analysis. In Nigeria; the odd of using modern contraception is nearly 15 times higher among rich women with more autonomy than their counterparts who are poor and are less autonomous and 5.5 times higher among Namibian women. The study concluded that contraceptive behaviors of currently married women of Namibia and Nigeria are not independent of the linkage between poverty and autonomy and thus recommended that more concerted efforts be made in addressing poverty and improving the autonomous status of women in sub-Sahara Africa