Buried in the Red Dirt

Bringing together a vivid array of analog and non-traditional sources, including colonial archives, newspaper reports, literature, oral histories, and interviews, Buried in the Red Dirt tells a story of life, death, reproduction and missing bodies and experiences during and since the British colonial period in Palestine. Using transnational feminist reading practices of existing and new archives, the book moves beyond authorized frames of collective pain and heroism. Looking at their day-to-day lives, where Palestinians suffered most from poverty, illness, and high rates of infant and child mortality, Frances Hasso's book shows how ideologically and practically, racism and eugenics shaped British colonialism and Zionist settler-colonialism in Palestine in different ways, especially informing health policies. She examines Palestinian anti-reproductive desires and practices, before and after 1948, critically engaging with demographic scholarship that has seen Zionist commitments to Jewish reproduction projected onto Palestinians. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Trends in the association between educational assortative mating, infant and child mortality in Nigeria

Background Existing knowledge has established the connection between maternal education and child survival, but little is known about how educational assortative mating (EAM), relates to childhood mortality. We attempt to examine this association in the context of Nigeria. Methods Data was obtained from the 2008, 2013, and 2018 waves of the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey, which is a cross-sectional study. The sample includes the analysis of 72,527 newborns within the 5 years preceding each survey. The dependent variables include the risk of a newborn dying before 12 months of age (infant mortality), or between the age of 12–59 months (child mortality). From the perspective of the mother, the independent variable, EAM, includes four categories (high-education homogamy, low-education homogamy, hypergamy, and hypogamy). The Cox proportional hazard regression was employed for multivariate analyses, while the estimation of mortality rates across the spectrum of EAM was obtained through the synthetic cohort technique. Results The risk of childhood mortality varied across the spectrum of EAM and was particularly lowest among those with high-education homogamy. Compared to children of mothers in low-education homogamy, children of mothers in high-education homogamy had 25, 31 to 19% significantly less likelihood of infant mortality, and 34, 41, and 57% significantly less likelihood of child mortality in 2008, 2013 and 2018 survey data, respectively. Also, compared to children of mothers in hypergamy, children of mothers in hypogamous unions had 20, 12, and 11% less likelihood of infant mortality, and 27, 36, and 1% less likelihood of child mortality across 2008, 2013 and 2018 surveys, respectively, although not significant at p < 0.05. Both infant and child mortality rates were highest in low-education homogamy, as expected, lowest in high-education homogamy, and lower in hypogamy than in hypergamy. Furthermore, the trends in the rate declined between 2008 and 2018, and were higher in 2018 than in 2013. Conclusion This indicates that, beyond the absolute level of education, the similarities or dissimilarities in partners’ education may have consequences for child survival, alluding to the family system theory. Future studies could investigate how this association varies when marital status is put into consideration.

Differential in infant, childhood and under-five death clustering among the empowered and non-empowered action group regions in India

Background With 8,82,000 deaths in the under-five period, India observed varied intra-state and inter-regional differences across infant and child mortality in 2018. However, scarce literature is present to capture this unusual concentration of mortality in certain families by examining the association of the mortality risks among the siblings of those families along with various unobserved characteristics of the mother. Looking towards the regional and age differential in mortality, this paper attempts to provide evidence for the differential in mortality clustering among infants (aged 0–11 months), children (12–59 months) and under-five (0–59 months) period among mothers from the Empowered Action Group (EAG) and non-EAG regions of India. Methods The study used data from the National Family Health Survey (2015–16) which includes all the birth histories of 475,457 women aged 15–49 years. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to fulfil the objectives of the study. A two-level random intercept Weibull regression model was used to account for the unexplained mother (family) level heterogeneity. Results About 3.3% and 5.9% of infant deaths and 0.8% and 1.6% of childhood deaths were observed in non-EAG and EAG regions respectively. Among them, a higher percentage of infant and child death was observed due to the death of a previous sibling. There were 1.67 times [95% CI: 1.55–1.80] and 1.46 times [CI: 1.37–1.56] higher odds of infant and under-five mortality of index child respectively when the previous sibling at the time of conception of the index child was dead in the non-EAG regions. In contrast, the odds of death scarring (death of previous sibling scars the survival of index child) were 1.38 times [CI: 1.32–1.44] and 1.24 times [CI: 1.20–1.29] higher for infant and under-five mortality respectively in the EAG regions. Conclusion The extent of infant and child mortality clustering and unobserved heterogeneity was higher among mothers in the non-EAG regions in comparison to their EAG region counterparts. With the growing situation of under-five mortality clustering in non-EAG states, region-wise interventions are recommended. Additionally, proper care is needed to ameliorate the inter-family variation in mortality risk among the children of both EAG and non-EAG regions throughout their childhood.

Divergent Trends of Lifespan Variation During Mortality Crises

Lifespan variation has been attracting increasingly greater attention as a measure of population health and mortality. Several studies have analysed periods of steady mortality decline, highlighting a strong inverse relationship between lifespan variation and life expectancy. Recent research has found that this association weakens, and even reverses, when mortality does not improve equally over age. However, to date no study has comprehensively explored the behaviour of lifespan variation when mortality increases significantly. Analysing three epidemics and two famines in Europe from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, we find that, during these events, relative lifespan variation increases, while absolute variation declines, and that subsequently both quickly revert to pre-crisis levels. Using decomposition techniques, we show that mortality at older ages leads to a temporary increase in absolute – but not relative – variation. Moreover, female lifespan variation is less affected by the crises than that of males, because of the higher impact of infant and child mortality on male lifespan variation. By underlining different trends of lifespan variation by sex and indicator, we offer new insight into the consequences of mortality crises. Contrary to what is often asserted, we also show that the choice of lifespan variation indicator is not always inconsequential.

Linkages of Multi-Dimensional Vulnerabilities with Infant and Child Mortality Rates in India and Its Specific Regions: Are Social Determinants of Health still Relevant?

The present study investigated linkages between multiple socio-economic vulnerabilities with infant and child mortality in India and its specific regions. Data from the National Family Health Survey (2015–16) was used for calculating the key-outcome variables, namely infant mortality and child mortality. The effective sample size for the study was 259,627. Bivariate analysis and binary logistic regression analysis were employed to examine three dimensions of vulnerabilities such as education, wealth, and caste on infant and child mortality. Children born to women with multiple-vulnerabilities were more likely to die than those born to non-vulnerable women. Women who were vulnerable in all the three-dimensions were more likely to have their children die as infants than those who were not vulnerable in any dimensions (predicted probabilities; 0.054 vs 0.026). The predicted probability for child mortality was 0.063 for women who were vulnerable and 0.028 for non-vulnerable women.