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

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