Socioeconomic Patterns Among Sexual Minorities

Previous research has often overlooked socioeconomic diversity among LGB people even though socioeconomic status is deeply intertwined with sexual minority status. Research methods that identify sexual minorities by their relationships do not represent the socioeconomically diverse conditions experienced by LGB people. Better identification methods in survey studies can help create more accurate research and policies that more adequately serve the needs of sexual minority populations and promote equality.

Socioeconomic Patterns for Global Mangrove Cover Changes with Multivariate Analyses

Socioeconomic patterns beyond the land conversions of global mangrove cover changes were few discussed. This study integrated databases of global mangrove covers, i.e., a multi-database in 1980-2016 with a combination of FAO country-survey and the global mangrove watch, and a mangrove biome cover database in 2000-2012. Annual mangrove cover change (%) of each mangrove holding country or territory was incorporated with its socioeconomic indicators in the two periods to testify possible socioeconomic patterns beyond the mangrove deforestation. The socioeconomic indicators consisted of GDP per capita and urban population percentile, and aquacultural indicators (production per capita, sales value per capita, contribution to the national GDP, and product price). Results indicated that annual mangrove cover change was interactively driven by multi-factors of national economy measures, urbanization, and aquaculture, instead of aquacultural dominance or GDP per capita alone. The multi-factor driven patterns of annual mangrove changes differed geographically among the continents. Temporal change of aquacultural product price was significantly and positively correlated to annual mangrove cover change (increase), especially in Asia and Oceania for both the periods, suggesting positive feedbacks of mangrove conservation and restoration in the two continents although the price was used to a motivator of mangrove deforestation, such as currently in Africa. These findings preliminarily bridge the knowledge gap between land conversion losses and socioeconomics of global mangrove cover changes.

Socioeconomic Patterns of Twitter User Activity

Stratifying behaviors based on demographics and socioeconomic status is crucial for political and economic planning. Traditional methods to gather income and demographic information, like national censuses, require costly large-scale surveys both in terms of the financial and the organizational resources needed for their successful collection. In this study, we use data from social media to expose how behavioral patterns in different socioeconomic groups can be used to infer an individual’s income. In particular, we look at the way people explore cities and use topics of conversation online as a means of inferring individual socioeconomic status. Privacy is preserved by using anonymized data, and abstracting human mobility and online conversation topics as aggregated high-dimensional vectors. We show that mobility and hashtag activity are good predictors of income and that the highest and lowest socioeconomic quantiles have the most differentiated behavior across groups.

Demographic and socioeconomic patterns in healthcare-seeking behaviour for respiratory symptoms in England: a comparison with non-respiratory symptoms and between three healthcare services

ObjectiveThis study will analyse respiratory contacts to three healthcare services that capture more of the community disease burden than acute data sources, such as hospitalisations. The objective is to explore associations between contacts to these services and the patient’s age, gender and deprivation. Results will be compared between healthcare services, and with non-respiratory contacts to explore how contacts differ by service and illness. It is crucial to investigate the sociodemographic patterns in healthcare-seeking behaviour to enable targeted public health interventions.DesignEcological study.SettingSurveillance of respiratory contacts to three healthcare services in England: telehealth helpline (NHS111); general practitioner in-hours (GPIH); and general practitioner out of hours unscheduled care (GPOOH).Participants13 million respiratory contacts to NHS111, GPIH and GPOOH.Outcome measuresRespiratory contacts to NHS111, GPIH and GPOOH, and non-respiratory contacts to NHS111 and GPOOH.ResultsMore respiratory contacts were observed for females, with 1.59, 1.73, and 1.95 times the rate of contacts to NHS111, GPOOH and GPIH, respectively. When compared with 15–44 year olds, there were 37.32, 18.66 and 6.21 times the rate of respiratory contacts to NHS111, GPOOH and GPIH in children <1 year. There were 1.75 and 2.70 times the rate of respiratory contacts in the most deprived areas compared with the least deprived to NHS111 and GPOOH. Elevated respiratory contacts were observed for males <5 years compared with females <5 years. Healthcare-seeking behaviours between respiratory and non-respiratory contacts were similar.ConclusionWhen contacts to services that capture more of the disease burden are explored, the demographic patterns are similar to those described in the literature for acute systems. Comparable results were observed between respiratory and non-respiratory contacts suggesting that when a wider spectrum of disease is explored, sociodemographic factors may be the strongest influencers of healthcare-seeking behaviour.