Kenneth C. Land

Anatoliy I. Yashin

Eric Stallard

This volume is a critical exposition of the data and analyses from a full decade of rigorous research into how age-related changes at the individual level, along with other factors, contribute to morbidity, disability and mortality risks at the broader population level. After summarizing the state of our knowledge in the field, individual chapters offer enlightening discussion on a range of key topics such as age trajectory analysis in select and general populations, incidence/age patterns of major chronic illnesses, and indices of cumulative deficits and their use in characterizing and understanding the detailed properties of individual aging. The book features comprehensive statistical analyses of unique longitudinal data sets including the unique resource of the Framingham Heart Study, with its more than 60 years of follow-up. Culminating in penetrating conclusions about the insights gained from the work involved, this book adds much to our understanding of the links between aging and human health.

Determinants of Healthy Life Span and Longevity

Biodemography of Aging

Yi Zeng

Danan Gu

Zhenglian Wang

This book presents an innovative demographic toolkit known as the ProFamy extended cohort-component method for the projection of household structures and living arrangements with empirical applications to the United States, the largest developed country, and China, the largest developing country. The ProFamy method uses demographic rates as inputs to project detailed distributions of household types and sizes, living arrangements of all household members, and population by age, sex, race/ethnicity, and urban/rural residence at national, sub-national, or small area levels. It can also project elderly care needs and costs, pension deficits, and household consumption. The ProFamy method presented herein has substantial merits compared to the traditional headship rate method, which is not linked to demographic rates and projects limited household types without other household members than "heads". The book consists of four parts. The first part presents the methodology, data, estimation issues, and empirical assessments. The next parts present applications in the United States (part two) and China (part three), concerning demographic, social, economic, and business research; policy analysis, including forecasting future trends of household type/size, elderly living arrangements, disability, and home-based care costs, and household consumption including housing and vehicles. The fourth part includes a user’s guide for the ProFamy software to project households, living arrangements, and home-based consumptions. This book offers an invaluable toolkit for researchers, analysts and students in academic, public and private businesses, whose work is related to levels and rates of change in households, population and consumption patterns.

The Extended Cohort-Component Method and Applications to the U.S. and China

Household and Living Arrangement Projections

Stephen H. Schneider

Social and natural scientists often are called upon to produce, or participate, in the pro duction of forecasts. This volume assembles essays that (a) describe the organizational and political context of applied forecasting, (b) review the state-of-the-art for many fore casting models and methods, and (c) discuss issues of predictability, the implications of forecaSt errors, and model construction, linkage and verification. The essays should be of particular interest to social and natural scientists concerned with forecasting large-scale systems. This project had its origins in discussions of social forecasts and forecasting method ologies initiated a few years ago by several social and natural science members of the Social Science Research Council's Committee on Social Indicators. It became appar ent in these discussions that certain similar problems were confronted in forecasting large-scale systems-be they social or natural. In response, the Committee hypothesized that much could be learned through more extended and systematic interchanges among social and natural scientists focusing on the formal methodologies applied in forecasting. To put this conjecture to the test, the Committee sponsored a conference at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, on June 10-13, 1984, on forecasting in the social and natural sciences. The conference was co-chaired by Committee members Kenneth C. Land and Stephen H. Schneider representing, respectively, the social and natural science mem bership of the Committee. Support for the conference was provided by a grant to the Council from the Division of Social and Economic Science of the National Science Foundation.

Forecasting in the Social and Natural Sciences

M. Joseph Sirgy

Alex C. Michalos

The aim of the Handbook of Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research is to create an overview of the field of Quality of Life (QOL) studies in the early years of the 21st century that can be updated and improved upon as the field evolves and the century unfolds. Social indicators are statistical time series “...used to monitor the social system, helping to identify changes and to guide intervention to alter the course of social change”. Examples include unemployment rates, crime rates, estimates of life expectancy, health status indices, school enrollment rates, average achievement scores, election voting rates, and measures of subjective well-being such as satisfaction with life-as-a-whole and with specific domains or aspects of life. This book provides a review of the historical development of the field including the history of QOL in medicine and mental health as well as the research related to quality-of-work-life (QWL) programs. It discusses several of QOL main concepts: happiness, positive psychology, and subjective wellbeing. Relations between spirituality and religiousness and QOL are examined as are the effects of educational attainment on QOL and marketing, and the associations with economic growth. The book goes on to investigate methodological approaches and issues that should be considered in measuring and analysing quality of life from a quantitative perspective. The final chapters are dedicated to research on elements of QOL in a broad range of countries and populations.

Kenneth C. Land

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