Aging
Making Public Pensions Sustainable
Mortality and fertility declines inevitably lead to increases in the proportion of the elderly within populations. Demographers expect population aging to become a widespread phenomenon in all world regions, raising concerns about the sustainability of public pension systems, such as the U.S. Social Security system. Failure to address these concerns could have adverse economic effects on a national and international scale. Population Council demographer John Bongaarts recently examined the situation in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States and offered policy options to make pension systems sustainable.
Gender and Health
Bias Against Women in South Asia Shortens Lifespan
All things being equal, women have an advantage over men in healthy life expectancy. For both biological and environmental reasons, in industrialized countries healthy life expectancy for women is about two years longer than for men. Not only are women genetically hardier, they also take fewer risks in general than men do. Population Council program associate Fariyal F. Fikree wondered whether this female advantage existed in settings with significant discrimination against women. To answer this question Fikree and Omrana Pasha of Emory University’s Women and Children’s Center examined health statistics in seven South Asian countries. They found that in all but one of those countries women’s healthy life expectancy is equal to or shorter than men’s and that gender discrimination was a contributing factor to this phenomenon.
Biomedical Research
Combating HIV on Multiple Fronts
Dendritic cells account for only approximately 1 percent of circulating immune system cells but are among the first such cells that encounter HIV following sexual or mother-to-child transmission of the virus and are vital to both the initiation and control of immune responses. Unfortunately, the encounter between dendritic cells and HIV does not end as it should, with immunity to the virus. Instead, the meeting spurs an increase in viral replication. Research conducted by Population Council immunologist Melissa Pope may lead to identifying ways of preventing HIV infection by targeting activated dendritic cells with a vaccine to launch an attack against HIV or by using a microbicide to block the mucosal transmission of HIV.
Family Planning
Review Finds Scarce Documentation on Quality-of-Care Efforts
In 1990, the Population Council’s Judith Bruce, now director of the Gender, Family, and Development program, developed a framework for studying quality of care in family planning service delivery and listed its key dimensions. This tool provided a means for researchers to determine what factors hindered or advanced the provision of high-quality care. Since that time, family planning program managers and providers have instituted changes intended to improve quality, and many believe that a good deal is known about the effect of such changes on client satisfaction and behavior. A review of the available research on this topic by Council program associate Saumya RamaRao and Raji Mohanam of Embryon, Inc. has revealed that there are, in fact, few rigorous experimental studies of quality-of-care interventions.
Transitions to Adulthood
Is Focus on Premarital Sex in Vietnam Warranted?
Sexual activity and its consequences, particularly HIV risk, have been a major focus of research on unmarried adolescents in Vietnam. However, a recent Population Council study suggests that other challenges may be more pressing for young people in that country.
Women's Health
Approaches to Researching Women's Reproductive Health
Since the late 1980s, comprehensive studies from Egypt, India, Nigeria, and Turkey have revealed the widespread prevalence of reproductive tract and other gynecologic disorders. These findings have prompted researchers to expand this work to explore the pervasiveness of these illnesses and to shed light on factors that place women at risk. But what are the best ways to conduct this type of research? Population Council senior program associate Shireen Jejeebhoy; Michael Koenig, associate professor, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University; and Christopher Elias, president, Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), have collaborated on a book, Reproductive Tract Infections and Other Gynaecological Disorder: A Multidisciplinary Approach, that tackles this question.
