Essays on developed nation mortality and Kenyan contraception
Abstract
This dissertation seeks to fulfill the three or more article option in Demography with four publishable articles. The first two are related in topic and data, but the third and fourth deal in different areas of demography. The reason for four articles rather than three is because the first, “How Many Americans Are Alive Because of Twentieth-Century Improvements in Mortality?” while designed to be a dissertation article, was co-authored with Professor Preston. For it, I constructed a model of the American population over 20 th century in which mortality, fertility and migration could be changed at any time, and the lost people accounted for. Sam Preston provided the idea for the topic and extensively edited the final version. “Cardiovascular and Tuberculosis Mortality: The Contrasting Effects of Changes in Two Causes of Death” expands on this model of the American population to include death rates from two specific causes, tuberculosis and cardiovascular disease. The third article, “Information and Stability in Kenyan Contraceptive Networks: What Can be Conveyed?” deals with what network partners know and think they know about their conversational partners. It studies how their behavior influences their actual and perceived networks and their networks influence their behavior. The fourth article, “A Description of Mortality Trends in Developed Nations, 1955–1996: Convergence and the Straight Line,” compares trends in various mortality rates among developed nations, and finds that the recent historical pattern in all nations is best explained by a simple linear trend on life expectancy.
Subject Area
Demographics|Social research|Public health
Recommended Citation
White, Kevin McArthur, "Essays on developed nation mortality and Kenyan contraception" (1999). Dissertations available from ProQuest. AAI9953617.
https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI9953617