Background Knowledge of the state of health of a population is necessary for planning for health services for that population. It is  a paradox that the health of populations is most commonly measured by mortality and cause of death patterns, but the absence of medical services available to a majority of the world population has made it unavoidable to equate “state of health” with “cause of death pattern”. In the absence of population registration, mortality and causes of death must be studied in samples from the population. The research presented in this thesis mainly has been done within such a sample in a collaborative project between Umeå university and the Addis Ababa university in Ethiopia. This research started 1986 and has run continuously since then. The thesis attempts to measure the effect that social and geographical inequalities has had on the mortality of the children in the study population. Population and Methods The population that is included in the demographic surveillance is the children under five years of age in nine rural and one urban community in central Ethiopia. Mortality and causes of death among the children have been followed since 1987. Results The mortality of the children in the study is high by international comparisons. The most important reason for mortality differences within the population is the difference in living conditions and societal services between the rural and urban areas. Approximately 45% of the child deaths could have been prevented if living conditions and services had been equal to rural and urban children. Conclusions Information concerning mortality and cause of death patterns are essential to planning. In order to empower the population, knowledge of the mortality and most common causes of death must be known to them.

The central research question is the extent to which gifted programming affects student academic outcomes of gifted as compared to not-gifted students and how this differs by race/ethnicity and/or poverty status. Since the identification of elementary school students as gifted is not random, propensity score matching is used to remove this bias in the estimates of the effects. A matched sample of North Carolina middle school students based on individual level data of both gifted and not-gifted students of varied racial/ethnic groups and income levels is used for this analysis. This enables a comparison of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade student achievement to determine the extent to which participating in gifted programming differentiates effects by race/ethnicity and poverty status. I show the additional test score gain, if any, from being in gifted programming compared to students not participating in gifted programs. Variations in gifted program effects across race/ethnicity and income are assessed. This research adds empirical evidence to the more qualitatively focused gifted debate by analyzing differences in student outcomes between gifted and not-gifted students in North Carolina. Since black and lower income students are less likely to participate in gifted programs, they disproportionately encounter less experienced teachers, lower expectations, and fewer resources. The extent to which these additional learning supports translate to differences in student outcomes are analyzed.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between Finnish and non-Finnish by-names in the church registers of Nedertorneå in the nineteenth century. The investigation shows that the by-names are rather heterogeneous in character and a portion of them consists of elements from different languages. The by-names are divided into Finnish, non-Finnish and parental names, i.e. patronymics and metro-nymics. In order to study the development within the by-name stock in the rural communities of Nedertorneå and in the town of Haparanda, the numbers of Finnish and non-Finnish by-names and of parental names (including comibnations with these bynames), found within the population over the age of 20, are calculated at approximately 20-year intervals during the period 1825-1886. The investigation shows that the by-name stock in Nedertorneå is far more stable than in Haparanda. Individual changes of by-name from one selected year to the next are also taken up, together with certain causes and their possible effect on the changes in the byname stock for the population. By-name changes seem to be more common in Nedertorneå than in Haparanda. However, no real tendencies towards Swedicized forms emerge before the 1890s and the name changes tend rather to have social causes. Finally, an attempt is made to relate the number of Finnish and non-Finnish bynames (including combinations with these by-names) to certain population figures for men and women for the different selected years. The instability in Haparanda's byname stock depends on the faster population growth in the town. The value of various church registers for investigating by-names in the nineteenth century is also discussed. / digitalisering@umu

Der Abwassersektor in Deutschland sieht sich mit zunehmend turbulentem Umfeld konfrontiert. Auf Grund der langen Nutzungsdauer ihrer Infrastruktur und ihrer Kapitalintensität ist die Abwasserwirtschaft durch hohe Fixkosten und durch ihre Anfälligkeit gegenüber Pfadabhängigkeiten charakterisiert. Dies zeigt sich besonders im Zusammenhang mit den Auswirkungen des demografischen Wandels in den letzten Jahren, in Folge dessen abnehmende Bevölkerungszahlen zu einem Verlust von Gebührenzahlern geführt haben. Zusätzlich wurde dieser Effekt durch einen beträchtlichen Rückgang der Wassernachfrage pro Kopf verstärkt. Die herkömmlichen Planungsansätze in der Siedlungsentwässerung basieren hauptsächlich auf Prognosen und Trendfortschreibungen und berücksichtigen somit nur unzureichend sich ändernde Rahmenbedingungen. Aus diesem Grund untersucht diese Dissertation inwiefern die geringe Anpassungsfähigkeit, die im Zusammenhang mit dem demografischen Wandel offensichtlich wurde, durch eine Stärkung der strategischen Planungskompetenzen, und speziell durch die Anwendung der Szenarioplanung, erhöht werden kann. Hierfür werden sowohl die prediktiven als auch die explorative Möglichkeiten der Szenarioplanung bewertet. Im ersten prediktiven Ansatz liegt der Fokus auf den spezifischen Auswirkungen des demografischen Wandels auf die Abwassergebühren. Der zweite explorative Ansatz basiert auf einer Kombination der Delphi-Technik mit der Szenarioplanung, in der die bedeutendsten zukünftigen Herausforderungen identifiziert und in vier Szenarien zusammengefasst werden. / The sanitation sector in Germany is challenged by an increasingly turbulent environment. Due to the long use-life of the infrastructure and its capital intensity, the sector is characterized by low rates of return, high fixed-costs and vulnerability to path dependency. This became particularly obvious in the last years within the context of demographic change, when a decreasing population led to the loss of fee payers, and was intensified by a considerable decline in the water demand per capita, which caused increasing wastewater fees. The traditional planning instruments in the sanitation sector rely mainly on forecasts and forward projections, while disregarding key dynamics of the surrounding political-legal, economic, societal, technological and environmental framework conditions. Therefore, this dissertation assesses if the low adaptive capacity of the sanitation sector, which became obvious with demographic change, can be enhanced by strengthening the long range planning competencies by means of scenario planning. The dissertation evaluates the possibilities of scenario planning as alternative planning instrument and explores the predictive as well as the explorative possibilities in two separate research streams. The predictive research stream analyzes the specific impacts of demographic change on wastewater fees. The focus lies on a short time horizon and one specific trend. The latter explorative research stream is addressed by a Delphi-based scenario study, in which the most relevant future challenges of the sanitation sector are identified and summarized in four scenarios.

Background: Breast and Gynecological cancers are a major public health problem. Smoking is associated with several chronic diseases including cancer. Other lifestyles of public health predispose many people to dyslipidemia, hypertension and obesity; risk factors for metabolic syndrome, and are associated with cancer. Objectives: The purpose of this study is to find if those who smoke, and have the metabolic syndrome, are more likely to have breast or gynecological cancers, and to find the distribution by education, having health insurance, race/ethnicity and socio-economic status. Methods: A case-control study of females aged 20 years and above who participated in the United States National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001-2010. Results: Females who have smoked more than hundred cigarettes in life and still smoke; a) have a 42 percent less chance of having a breast cancer diagnosis (OR 0.58; 95% CI 0.36 – 0.93, p-value 0.025), and b) are 2.67 times as likely to report a cervical cancer diagnosis as females who have smoked less than hundred cigarettes in life (OR 2.67; 95% CI 1.72 – 4.13, p-value Conclusion: Smoking and metabolic syndrome are very important indicators of reproductive health and needs further study. Smoking cessation interventions should be an integral part of cervical cancer prevention programs especially targeted at younger females and females who live below the federal poverty level.

Tanzania, one of many nations in Africa with high infant mortality to preventable diseases, continues to experience relatively low vaccination rates for childhood diseases. In this paper, we examine the maternal barriers to obtaining vaccines for their children in Tanzania. The risk and protective factors we analyzed include age of the mother and children, education level of the mother, number of children, maternal decision-making practices, power dynamics and others. Lack of control, limited decision practices, and decreased maternal empowerment were identified as key barriers to obtaining vaccines for children. Overall, this data is consistent with previous studies regarding barriers to vaccinations in Tanzania and other African nations.

Demographic transition implies severe challenges for high income nations, for instance Japan, as the population decreases due to declines in birth rates as well as the higher rate of elderly population. More women are entering the labor market which affects birth rates. In addition, technological progress has improved health care and standard of living, bringing up life expectancies. However, the elderly population is increasing, elevating the dependency ratio which dampens the economic growth. The changed age structure alters the ratio of labor force negatively relative to population, in spite of the higher female labor participation. This paper analyzes how the current demographic transition in advanced countries influences economic growth. The paper is focused on Japan that is currently dealing with the consequences from the fastest increase in the percentage share of the elderly population compared to the other high income countries. The empirical analysis is based on a growth accounting model that estimates the impact of demographic factors on growth rates in high income countries. The empirical results indicate that demographic factors such as life expectancy and total dependency ratio have a negative impact on economic growth. The conclusion is that Japan and other rich countries have to make greater efforts in dampening the demographic change by policy making and in-migration.

This paper presents the study of family firm demographic characteristics on the base of 415 Swedish family companies. The main purpose is to investigate if there is a connection between the location of a family company and its size, age and industrial sector. The results of the study showed some distinctions of the family firms located in rural areas. They are usually of smaller size compare to those from more urban areas. The prevailing types of activities of the rural family companies are manufacturing and wholesale whereas the urban family firms dominate in the service sector, especially in the branches demanding high level of education and technology. There was also an attempt made to detect the relationship between the location and the age but there was not found any prove for this relation to exist. Also there was found evidence that most of the Swedish family companies are situated in less urban and rural areas which is in line with the results of previous studies in this area.

A considerable amount of academic attention has been directed towards the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction. But the nature of the exact relationship is still shrouded with uncertainty. In addition, few researches focus on the dimensions of service quality and their differing impacts on customer satisfaction in western fast food restaurants. This paper examines whether or not quality and satisfaction should be considered as a single construct, or distinct, separable constructs. Customer satisfaction is typically evaluated by means of a single item scale and sometimes multiple item scales. Conversely, this empirical study adopts a different approach and considers customer satisfaction as a multi-dimensional construct just as service quality, but argues that customer satisfaction should be operationalized along the same corresponding items on which service quality is operationalized. The SERVQUAL instrument was slightly modified to measure the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction among customers in western fast food chains in Kaohsiung. The research survey captures customers¡¦ perceptions of excellent service and compares it with their overall satisfaction. Using multiple regression analysis and T-test, the paper also reports on how socioeconomic and demographic disparities can influence the perception of service quality and satisfaction. Based on the research findings, the service quality and customer satisfaction are indeed independent but are closely related constructs. Their relationship suggests that an increase in one will lead to an increase in another. The statistical analysis also revealed that demographic variables can have major influences on service quality and customer satisfaction. The aim of the study is to supply useful results for future customer satisfaction researches in the fast food industry and provide insights into market segmentation strategies.

With the ongoing innovation of production technology, the quality and properties of NoteBook (NB) are more advanced, and the price is getting lower. Due to the low price and the rising of Chinese consumption level, the demand of NB is progressively increasing. On the other hand, compared with other items, NB is a high unit price item. Therefore, the brand name of products becomes a factor for consideration in consumer purchases. It also leads to the consequence of NB industrial concentration. According to MIC¡¦s report, the global market share of top 5 NB brand (Acer, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Lenevo, and Toshiba) is up to 74% in 2010. Due to the circulation in information technology, NB functions and services provided by brand companies become similar. Under this condition, the discrepancy between different brand NBs is shortened. In the consumer-oriented market, only consumer satisfaction cannot create the consumer loyalty. Despite the consumer satisfaction, brand companies should consider other factors that affect the brand loyalty. The research is to discuss the factors affecting brand loyalty from the aspects of involvement, using habits, and demographic variables. In addition, statistic analysis is based on collecting questionnaires, in which the analysis includes factor analysis, regression analysis, and ANOVA analysis. The research found that: 1. Consumer satisfaction still affects brand value ,and be a essential factor of brand loyalty. 2. Regarding to involvement, product pleasure will be factor between consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty; others will be not. 3. Using habit and Demographic Statistic will be factors between consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty.