Has demography witnessed a data revolution? Promises and pitfalls of a changing data ecosystem

Social capital mediates knowledge gaps in informing sexual and reproductive health behaviours across Africa

Advancing sexual and reproductive health is essential for promoting human rights and women's empowerment, and combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic. A large body of literature across the social sciences emphasizes the importance of social capital, generated through the strength of social networks, for shaping health behaviours. However, large-scale measurement of social capital and social networks remains elusive, especially in the context of low-income countries. Here we delve into the role of social capital dynamics, and in particular social connectedness across communities as measured through Facebook friendship links, in shaping knowledge diffusion and behaviour related to sexual and reproductive health in 495 regions across 33 countries in Africa. Our findings demonstrate that regions with higher levels of social connectedness are more similar in their knowledge about contraception and HIV testing, as well as their adoption of these behaviours. We further observe that the influence of social connectedness becomes stronger when the knowledge gaps between regions are larger. In other words, regions are more similar in behaviours, despite knowledge gaps, when they are socially connected. These insights carry significant policy implications, especially for the design and targeting of public health campaigns. We highlight that social connectedness can serve both as a driver and an obstacle in behaviour formation, underscoring the importance of understanding its influence on health-related outcomes.

The Dangers of Drawing Cohort Profiles From Period Data: A Research Note

Drawing cohort profiles and cohort forecasts from grids of age-period data is common practice in demography. In this research note, we (1) show how demographic measures artificially fluctuate when calculated from the diagonals of age-period rates because of timing and cohort-size bias, (2) estimate the magnitude of these biases, and (3) illustrate how prediction intervals for cohort indicators of mortality may become implausible when drawn from Lee-Carter methods and age-period grids. These biases are surprisingly large, even when the cohort profiles are created from single-age, single-year period data. The danger is that we overinterpret deviations from expected trends that were induced by our own data manipulation.

The Future of Social Determinants of Health: Looking Upstream to Structural Drivers

Policy Points Policies that redress oppressive social, economic, and political conditions are essential for improving population health and achieving health equity. Efforts to remedy structural oppression and its deleterious effects should account for its multilevel, multifaceted, interconnected, systemic, and intersectional nature. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should facilitate the creation and maintenance of a national publicly available, user-friendly data infrastructure on contextual measures of structural oppression. Publicly funded research on social determinants of health should be mandated to (a) analyze health inequities in relation to relevant data on structural conditions and (b) deposit the data in the publicly available data repository.

Why a long-term perspective is beneficial for demographers

Although many contemporary demographers pay attention to historical demography, there is often a surprising lack of appreciation of the demographic circumstances and systems of the past, suggesting an implicit assumption that they are not relevant to the present or that the methods, data, and questions addressed by historical and contemporary demographers are different. This paper provides an overview of historical demography as published in Population Studies and how this has developed over time. Drawing on this, I demonstrate that historical and contemporary demography use similar data sources and identical methods, and they often address comparable questions. I argue that an appreciation of demographic patterns and processes is beneficial for all demographers, even those who work on the most recent time periods, and that better integration of historical and contemporary demography would be beneficial to both. The paper also considers three challenges for historical demography as it moves forward.