Purpose: To examine differences in correlates of neonatal and postneonatal infant mortality rates, across counties, by degree of rurality. Methods: Neonatal and postneonatal mortality rates were calculated from the 1998 to 2002 Compressed Mortality Files from the National Center for Health Statistics. Bivariate analyses assessed the relationship…

In 2007, Nigeria passed an important milestone: one elected government passed power to another for the first time in the nation's history. Though imperfect, the poll demonstrated powerfully that Nigeria's representative democracy was not a transient phase between periods of military repression but a growing reality. For 20 years, the MacArthur…

Purpose: To conduct an assessment of rural environmental pollution sources and associated population mortality rates. Methods: The design is a secondary analysis of county-level data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Agriculture, National Land Cover Dataset, Energy Information Administration, Centers for Disease Control…

Many governments advocate nationwide health insurance coverage but the effects of such a program are less known in developing countries. We use part of the 2006 China Agricultural Census (CAC) to examine whether the recent health insurance coverage in rural China has affected children mortality, pregnancy mortality, and the school enrollment of…

Objectives: To accurately count the number of infant maltreatment-related fatalities and to use information from the birth certificates to predict infant maltreatment-related deaths. Methods: A population-based retrospective cohort study of infants born in Alaska for the years 1992 through 2005 was conducted. Risk factor variables were ascertained…

Context: It is unknown whether rural isolation may affect birth outcomes and infant mortality differentially for Indigenous versus non-Indigenous populations. We assessed birth outcomes and infant mortality by the degree of rural isolation among First Nations (North American Indians) and non-First Nations populations in Manitoba, Canada, a setting…

This study conducted in Meigs County, Ohio between January 2009 and June 2009 employed grounded theory to investigate the use of health education media by rural Appalachian individuals with type 2 diabetes in middle and late adulthood. Persons in middle adulthood were 34- to 60-years-old, and persons in late adulthood were 61- to 75-years-old.…

The long-term relationship between lower intelligence and mortality risk in later life is well established, even when controlling for a range of health and sociodemographic measures. However, there is some evidence for differential effects in various domains of cognitive performance. Specifically, tests of fluid intelligence may have a stronger…

Although the past decade has witnessed increased usage of ecological data to map the community-level effects of religion, the vast majority of studies in this body of scholarship continue to be plagued by two key shortcomings. First, ecological research on religion is often conducted in an atheoretical manner, one that privileges the structural…

One literature documents a significant, black-white gap in average test scores, while another finds a substantial narrowing of the gap during the 1980's, and stagnation in convergence after. We use two data sources -- the Long Term Trends NAEP and AFQT scores for the universe of applicants to the U.S. military between 1976 and 1991 -- to show: 1)…

Purpose: The present study hypothesized that simple, everyday physical activity (EPA) would decline with advancing age; that women would have a more favorable EPA profile than would men; and that EPA would have a survival benefit. Design and Methods: Community-dwelling participants (aged 80-98 years, n = 198) wore mechanical actigraphs in order…

There is growing evidence that childhood IQ is inversely associated with mortality in later life. However, the specificity of this association in terms of causes of death, whether it is continuous over the whole range of IQ scores and whether it is the same according to age and sex is not clear. In a large cohort (N = 11,603) of a complete…

Life continues to hold considerable risk for adolescents in the United States. In 2006, the teen death rate stood at 64 deaths per 100,000 teens (13,739 teens) (KIDS COUNT Data Center, 2009). Although it has declined by 4 percent since 2000, the rate of teen death in this country remains substantially higher than in many peer nations, based…

Smoke from massive wildfires blanketed Indonesia in late 1997. This paper examines the impact that this air pollution (particulate matter) had on fetal, infant, and child mortality. Exploiting the sharp timing and spatial patterns of the pollution and inferring deaths from "missing children" in the 2000 Indonesian Census, I find that the…

Recent evidence using compulsory schooling laws as instruments for education suggests that education has a causal effect on mortality (Lleras-Muney, 2005). However, little is known about how exactly education affects health. This paper uses compulsory schooling laws to try to identify how education impacts health and to indirectly assess the merit…