Period life expectancy is calculated from age-specific death rates using life table methods that are among the oldest and most widely employed tools of demography. These methods are rarely questioned, much less criticized. Yet changing age patterns of adult mortality in countries with high life...

In June 2000, an estimated 25 percent of adults in Zimbabwe were living with HIV/AIDS. Statistical data on the impact of the epidemic, though problematic in many ways, are better for Zimbabwe than for many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This analysis presents estimates of adult mortality...

Pakistan's population growth rate rose steadily from about 2.6 percent per annum in the early 1960s to a high of about 3.5 percent during the late 1980s. Since then it has declined to an estimated 2.1 percent for 2003. Growth rates calculated from the population censuses, which show a very...

This paper introduces and develops the idea of “increments to life.†Increments to life are roughly analogous to forces of mortality: they are quantities specified for each age and time by a mathematical function of two variables that may be used to describe, analyze and model changing...

type="main" <p>The adult literacy rate, a commonly used indicator of male and female literacy, gives an unnecessarily incomplete picture of progress toward gender equality and universal literacy. Age-specific literacy rates provide evidence of changing male and female literacy for up to seven...</p>