PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

S H Preston

Publications and source records attributed to S H Preston.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMed1994

Estimating African-American mortality from inaccurate data.

This paper evaluates the quality of vital statistics and census data for estimating African-American mortality over a period of six decades. The authors employ intercensal cohort comparisons and extinct generation estimates to demonstrate that conventionally constructed African-American death rates may be seriously flawed as early as age 50. Using the crude death rate at ages 50+ for 1978-1982 in conjunction with estimated growth rates and two model life table systems, the authors estimate black age-specific death rates in 1978-1982. These results suggest that if a racial crossover in death rates occurs, the age pattern of mortality among African-Americans must be far outside the range observed in populations with more accurate data.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

The contours of demography: estimates and projections.

This paper considers the scope of demography and the various research approaches that legitimately could claim the label. As a small field lacking security in academic structures, demography has been unusually sensitive to demand factors, including those associated with perceived population problems. International health is cited as an area of increased demographic presence; reasons for this development are explored. The technology for performing research in demography is improving more rapidly than in many other areas of the social sciences, and thus is helping to improve the relative standing of the field. Taking a demand-oriented approach, the paper identifies several promising research areas in which demographers will be called on to address issues of national and international concern.

Cross-Cultural Comparison↗
PubMed1992

Effects of early-life conditions on adult mortality: a review.

"This paper considers the effects of health conditions in childhood on an individual's mortality risks as an adult. It examines epidemiologic evidence on some of the major mechanisms expected to create a linkage between childhood and adult mortality and reviews demographic and epidemiologic studies for evidence of the hypothesized linkages....Many empirical studies support the notion that childhood conditions play a major role in adult mortality, but only in the case of respiratory tuberculosis has the demographic importance of a specific mechanism been established by cohort studies. One's date and place of birth also appear to be persistently associated with risks of adult death in a wide variety of circumstances. An individual's height, perhaps the single best indicator of nutritional and disease environment in childhood, has recently been linked to adult mortality, especially from cardiovascular diseases. Further research is needed, however, before causal mechanisms can be identified."

Adult↗
PubMed1992

African-American marriage in 1910: beneath the surface of census data.

This paper examines the quality of information about marital status, marital duration, and marriage order among African-American women in the U.S. Census of 1910. It compares the reported prevalence of widowhood to estimates of widowhood based on the mortality of black men and on the ages of women at first marriage. It also compares the reported distributions of duration of first marriage to estimates based on mortality and on age at first marriage. It concludes that census reports are subject to serious error. Widowhood is overreported, and marital turnover appears to have been faster than implied by census reports. The prevalance of "own children" is used to confirm these conclusions and to suggest motivations for misreporting.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1991

Age misreporting and its effects on adult mortality estimates in Latin America.

"This article investigates whether misreporting of ages contributes to the apparently low mortality at older ages in Latin America. It compares the size of cohorts enumerated at two censuses, after allowance for intercensal deaths, in 10 intercensal periods in four countries. It finds evidence of very pervasive overstatement of age at advanced ages. Using an empirical age-reporting matrix for Costa Rica, it estimates the bias that such misstatement produces in measured adult mortality levels in that country."

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Demographic conditions responsible for population aging.

This article develops and applies two expressions for the rate of change of a population's mean age. In one, aging is shown to be negatively related to contemporary birth rates and death rates. In a general sense, aging occurs when vital rates are too low, as illustrated through applications to the United States, the Netherlands, and Japan. The other expression relates the rate of aging to a population's demographic history, in particular to changes in mortality, migration, and the annual number of births. Applications to the United States and Sweden show that the dominant factor in current aging in these countries is a history of declining mortality. Migration also contributes significantly but in opposite directions in the two countries. The two approaches are integrated after recognizing that the rate of change in the mean age is equal to the covariance between age and age-specific growth rates. A decomposition of this covariance shows that the two seemingly unrelated expressions contain exactly the same information about the age pattern of growth rates.

Aging↗
PubMed1988

Age-specific growth rates: the legacy of past population dynamics.

Recent developments in population mathematics have focused attention on a function that is widely available but rarely examined: the set of age-specific growth rates in a population. In particular, this set of rates is sufficient for translating the current birth rate and age-specific mortality rates into the current age distribution. This growth-rate function contains all of the pertinent features of a population's demographic history that are required to relate major demographic functions for a particular period to one another. This article presents an expression for the age-specific growth rate and uses it to derive an equation for age distribution. We show how the value of the age-specific growth rate is determined by a population's demographic past and present various sets of growth rates corresponding to stylized demographic scenarios. Several noteworthy sets of growth rates observed in human populations are discussed. Finally, we explain why age-specific growth rates make it possible to determine the age distribution solely from information on current demographic conditions.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

Relations among standard epidemiologic measures in a population.

Recent developments in population mathematics apply to measurement issues in epidemiology. In particular, they demonstrate explicitly the relations that prevail among incidence, prevalence, case-fatality, mortality, and duration of illness in a population at a moment in time, rather than in a cohort of persons followed through time (or in a population artificially assumed to be stationary). They indicate explicitly how certain common indicators such as the ratio of deaths to new cases should be interpreted. They also suggest possible new strategies for estimating certain measures, but these would require some reorientation of current approaches to measurement.

Epidemiologic Methods↗
PubMed1984

New estimates of child mortality in the United States at the turn of the century.

"This article estimates levels of childhood mortality on the basis of new data derived from a nationally representative sample of manuscripts of the 1900 U.S. census. The data are responses to census questions on numbers of children ever born and numbers surviving. The results for a subsample corresponding to the small death registration area (DRA) in 1900/02 validate the procedures used." The findings suggest that the 1900-1902 DRA life tables seriously overestimate child mortality among blacks. "Evidence also indicates that child mortality was declining at a moderate pace in the late 19th century, but that little decline was occurring among blacks. The results suggest the need for revising accounts of American black demographic history, including birth rates. They also imply that 20th-century progress in narrowing black-white mortality differentials has been smaller than is commonly believed."

Black or African American↗
PubMed1984

Children and the elderly: divergent paths for America's dependents.

Let me summarize briefly. My argument is that we have made a set of private and public choices that have dramatically altered the age profile of well-being. These choices are in an important sense joint ones involving the number of dependents we have as well as the conditions in which they live. This jointness derives from several sources. One is that the same institution--the conjugal family--remains the principal agent responsible for both childbearing and childrearing. Factors that influence the health of that institution invariably affect both numbers of and conditions for children. There was simply no way to protect children fully from the earthquake that shuddered through the American family in the past 20 years. The factors at work here are not only the objective conditions we face but also the set of values and mental constructs we elect to face them with. At the other end of the age scale, we can obviously affect the number of elderly persons as well as their circumstances by altering health programs, as we have so decisively chosen to do. A final source of jointness is that numbers themselves affect conditions. Some of these effects are largely inadvertent, as I've argued in regard to public schooling, and others seem to be very deliberate outcomes of the political process. It's useful to step back and ask whether the mixture of numbers and conditions that we've chosen is the one that best serves us. In regard to redistributions from the working-age population to the elderly, the answer is far from obvious. There is surely something to be said for a system in which things get better as we pass through life rather than worse. The great levelling off of age curves of psychological distress, suicide and income in the past two decades might simply reflect the fact that we have decided in some fundamental sense that we don't want to face futures that become continually bleaker. But let's be clear that the transfers from the working-age population to the elderly are also transfers away from children, since the working ages bear far more responsibility for childrearing than do the elderly. And let's also recognize that the sums involved are huge. Just the increase in federal expenditures on the elderly between 1977 and 1983, if distributed among the population under age 15, would come to well over $2,000 per child.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Aged↗