Scholars have recently become increasingly interested in the role religion plays in the responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Here, we present the Malawi Religion Project (MRP), which provides data to examine the relationship between religion and HIV/AIDS through surveys and...

We explore the spatial distribution of orphans in two areas of Malawi. We first review pertinent themes in qualitative data collected in our research sites. Then, using spatial analysis, we show how positive and negative clusters of orphans—which we term orphanhood "hotspots" and...

The Netherlands has seen a considerable decline of the period total fertility rate and delayed childbearing, just like all other European countries. The drop in fertility, however, has not been as sharp as in many other regions of Europe. The period total fertility rate in the Netherlands has...

This paper evaluates the quality of the data collected as part of the Kenya and Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Projects, two longitudinal household surveys that examine the role of social networks in influencing attitudes and behavior regarding family size, family planning, and HIV/AIDS...

This article examines changes in network structure using data on conversational networks from the 1998 and 2001 rounds of the Malawi Diffusion and Ideation Change project. The principal aims are to show that network structure can change significantly in relatively short periods - in particular...

Economic and sociological theories of marriage have long emphasized the impact of women’s education and employment on union formation. In this study, we explore the relevance of the female economic independence hypothesis to explain women’s patterns of entry into marriage and...

This paper performs a systematic analysis of all currently available Russian data on mortality by region, census year (1970, 1979, 1989, and 1994) and cause of death. It investigates what links may be found between these geographical variations in cause-specific mortality, the negative general...

The 2000 censuses show that the proportion of women below age 30 who are mothers has dropped substantially in most Latin America countries, suggesting that the social imperative of early motherhood, which has long prevailed in the region, is weakening. Surveys conducted in 14 Latin American...

This study is a first attempt to produce reliable estimates of mortality in Georgia and Armenia in the 1990s. Official statistics registered a decrease in mortality over the 1990s in spite of local wars, mass flows of refugees, and severe economic hardships faced by populations. According to...

In Spain, nearly two-thirds of women aged 20-34 have not yet entered their first union. However, almost half of them have a stable partner in a different household. Hence, the drop in marriage rates and low prevalence of cohabitation cannot be rightly interpreted as a decline in partnership...