ADSRI 2009 Seminar Archive

Over the last half century Indonesia has been concerned about excessive population growth. To reduce the levels of fertility the government in 1968 established a national family planning program. In the following three decades fertility levels fell from over 5 to under 3 children per woman. In the past decade questions have arisen about the validity and reliability of fertility estimates. Increasingly the Indonesian Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) have reported higher fertility than levels recorded in the censuses and other large social sample surveys. In 2007 the discrepancy reached more than half a child on average. This paper reveals the causes of the discrepancy and shows ways to adjust the DHS results to gain more reliable measures. At present Indonesian national fertility is very close to the policy target of replacement levels by the year 2010, but there remain major persistent differences between provinces and social groups.

This seminar introduces the ASGS which will replace the current Australian Statistical Geographical Classification (ASGC) in July 2011. The paper briefly summarise the background to the development of the ASGS: it discusses the conceptual basis of the new classification and gives an update on the progress of its development and implementation, including the issues that have emerged so far.

The seminar will be of interest to anyone who uses or prepares social or economic statistics on a substate basis, those with an interest in the pattern of settlement in Australia or who are developing geographical classifications.

Tuesday 10

Context Effects: A Matter of Life and Death
Paul Mathews
PhD Candidate
London School of Economics

Tuesday 17

Welfare, Labour-market Status and Fertility in Scandinavia
Dr Gunnar Andersson
Associate Professor in Demography
Stockholm University

In policy debate and family-demographic research, the Nordic countries frequently serve as a point of reference. It is common to relate their relatively high fertility to the setup of the Nordic welfare regime. Policies aimed at strengthening women’s labour-market attachment and at promoting gender equality have made it easier for people in these countries to combine work and family life. The present overview focuses on labour-market status and fertility in Denmark, a country known for its labour-market model of “flexicurity”. Research results are presented to give insight into the role of unemployment, part-time work, and branch of occupation on the childbearing behaviour in the Danish context

Tuesday 24

Work in Progress Seminar: Associations Between Confidants and Self Related Health in the Elderly and Working Age Populations: an Analysis of the General Social Survey 2006
Dr Heather Booth
Associate Professor, ADSRI
and
Paul Mathews
PhD Candidate, London School of Economics

Tuesday 31

Models of Internal Migration: A Regional Perspective
Dr Graeme Byrne
Senior Lecturer in Mathematics and Statistics
La Trobe University

Dr Byrne will present an overview of a recent Australian internal migration modelling project. Australian internal migration will be described from national and state perspectives using age specific flow maps. The modelling strategy is adapted from the two stage approach used by Fotheringham et al (2002) in their internal migration model for the UK. The Alonso framework, migration determinants, model selection and diagnostic procedures will be discussed. Features of the talk include: model selection using bootstrap assisted stepwise regression, intrinsic multicollinearity, estimating the relative importance of predictors using the LMG metric and residual diagnostic procedures. Poisson and negative binomial regression and their zero-inflated extensions will also be discussed.

Tuesday 7

Demographic and Labour Supply Futures for Australia
Professor Peter McDonald, Director, ADSRI
and
Dr Jeromey Temple, Research Fellow, ADSRI

The economic-demographic model, MoDEM, is used to examine the impact of various levels of net overseas migration upon future labour supply, GDP and GDP per capita in Australia. The results show that net migration of 180,000 per annum optimizes future levels of GDP per capita. In the context of strong future labour demand, the authors argue that the Government’s permanent skilled migration programme should be focused upon long-term labour demand requirements rather than being seen as the means to plug short-term gaps in labour supply.

Skilled Migration from Europe to Australia
Dr Siew-Ean Khoo
Senior Fellow
ADSRI
Paper (PDF 129kb)

Abstract
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association, Family Law Quarterly recently invited Professor Oldham to comment on changes in US divorce law and its consequences. In this seminar, drawing on his article for FLQ, Professor Oldham summarises trends in changes in the rates of marriage, divorce, cohabitation and remarriage in the US. He also provides some information about changes in labour force participation of married women, as well as the career costs of being a primary caretaker. Various legal changes, such as the almost universal acceptance of ‘equitable distribution’ of property at divorce, as well as the impact of legal and societal changes on spousal support, are also discussed. The paper concludes by contrasting the US context with the recent experience in Canada, where advisory guidelines have been adopted in an attempt to provide some greater uniformity in the area of postseparation financial arrangements.
Flyer (PDF 82KB)

Abstract
Up until the late 1970s, Pacific Island populations were almost uniformly youthful with less than 5% of the population aged 60 and over. Median ages of 17-19 years were common. During the last two decades of the 20th century, many Pacific Island Countries entered the latter stages of the demographic transition, with the inevitable result that their populations are now ageing. Median ages are projected to rise to 29-30 years by 2025 and to 33-39 years by 2050. The pace of ageing is presently most rapid in the sub-regions of Micronesia and Polynesia. By 2050, many of the countries of these sub-regions will have populations in which 20% or more will be aged 60 years and over. The fastest growing age group in these countries is the population aged 80 years of age and over (the 'oldest old').

This paper describes ageing trends in the Pacific Islands over the time period 1950-2050, comparing sub-regions and individual countries. It then explores some of the public policy issues that these countries will face in the coming decades as population ageing progresses.
(Flyer PDF 82kb)

Abstract
Abortion presents a confused challenge to the public health and legal systems of Indonesia. In the run-up to the April legislative elections the front pages of Jakarta newspapers were filled with stories about a political issue that no politician wanted to touch: the arrest of ten individuals associated with an illegal abortion clinic. The newspapers stressed the immorality of abortion, but could not explain the nature of the legal charges. There were clearly violations against medical certification, status of clinics, and medical practice rules, but there was little clarity to be found in statues related to abortion. Yet, while the public were enthralled by this story there was irony in the contrast between the reports of this abortion arrest compared to the nature and scale of the actual abortion problem in Indonesia. It is variously argued that one to two million abortions take place each year. Most are unsafe, being carried out by traditional healers or uncertified medical practitioners. There are no representative statistics on the characteristics of women seeking pregnancy termination. Since the mid 1970s, committed activists around the country have pressed to have the legal status of abortion reformed and the clinical setting of procedures improved, but to little avail. This paper will review the recent developments, and some failures, in the task of abortion law reform and the prevention of unsafe abortions.

Flyer

Abstract
One of the major challenges facing the world is to get a better understanding of environmental changes and their wide range of effects on future sustainable development and the wellbeing of human kind. Among these effects, the impact of environmental changes on population health is arguably the most important one. While such impact has long been noted, detailed investigations into such impact are still limited, and this is especially the case in less developed countries.

To improve our knowledge of the health impact of environmental conditions, researchers from the Australian National University, Fudan University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Monash University, Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Prevention and Control and University of Cambridge have been jointly conducting a number of interrelated studies. The major objective of these studies is to undertake detailed and comparative investigation into health and mortality transition in East Asia and to get a better understanding on the impact of environmental conditions on population health. Up to now, a large amount of demographic and environmental data has been systematically collected by these projects, and some preliminary data analysis has been conducted.

This presentation will report our preliminary research findings on the seasonality of death in Shanghai, daily mortality patterns in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the interrelationship between weather conditions, air quality and variations in daily mortality patterns in the study areas.

Flyer

Abstract
The seminar will be an overview of a body of research (including some Professor Rodgers own research) that has examined the links between childhood adversity and a wide range of outcomes through childhood and into the adult years.  Parental divorce is one focus of this research but other aspects of adversity, including child abuse and neglect, also feature.  The outcomes of interest span social and emotional development, educational and socio-economic achievement, aggressive and delinquent behaviour, substance use, physical and mental health, and family and intimate relationships.

Research within specific areas tends to follow a historical progression of (i) reporting associations (while often implying direct causation), (ii) investigating whether particular features of families at risk (such as conflict or poverty) contribute to observed associations, and (iii) separating out the effects of a primary risk factor of interest from the effects of other “confounding” factors.

Studies investigating the experience of multiple childhood adversity are less common but the findings are striking.  First, different types of adversity co-occur at a level greater than expected by chance.  Individual correlations are usually not very strong, but the consequences for the likelihood of finding several adversities in the same family are marked.  Second, the probability of poor long-term outcomes often follows a dose-response relationship with the number of adversities experienced.  Often, a simple count of adversities is as useful in predicting outcomes as are more complex multiple regression methods.

The experience of multiple adversity is a neglected topic in many areas of research.  We need to think more about capturing its significance than breaking it down into the adjusted effects of individual risk factors.  In a policy context, we need to think about services and interventions that can deal with families experiencing multiple difficulties.

Abstract
Using the Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks (VOSON) software, this presentation will attempt to map emerging Muslim online networks in China. Through visualizing the networking patterns of some representative Chinese Muslim websites, the preliminary findings of the emerging Muslim online networks will provide a case study by giving an initial analysis of the expanding civil society in the context of China’s economic globalization and the sovereign power of the People’s Republic of China.

Friday 21
12.30 - 2pm
Seminar Rm A

Re-examining China's fertility: Estimates from education statistics
Professor Chen Wei
People's University of China

Tuesday 1
2.30 - 4pm*
Seminar Rm A

The Effects of Pregnancy Spacing on Various Maternal-child Health Outcomes
Dr Julie DaVanzo
Senior Economist and Demographer
RAND Corporation

Reproductive patterns (maternal age, parity, and the intervals between pregnancies) are correlated with infant, child, and maternal health and survival. This seminar will present research on the effects of reproductive patterns on infant, child, and maternal mortality in Matlab, Bangladesh, with particular attention to the effects of pregnancy spacing. This research has helped guide the efforts of family planning programs to promote healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies.

* Please note that the time of this seminar has changed from that previously advertised.

The Media and Academic Research: Achieving a Productive Relationship
George Megalogenis, Senior Journalist, The Australian
Jane O'Dwyer, Communications & External Liaison Office, Office of the Vice Chancellor, ANU
Professor Peter McDonald, Director, ADSRI
Professor Bruce Chapman, Public Policy, Crawford School of Economics and Government, ANU

The panel will give their individual perspectives on the interaction of academic researchers with the media. What are the purposes of having your work reported in the media? Do the aims of the journalist and the researcher overlap? Under what circumstances should researchers engage with the media about their research? How do you get your research into the media when you want to do so? When should the researcher be avoiding engagement with the media? How do you say no to the media? Should the researcher ‘interpret’ beyond the research? Are researchers put under too much pressure by university administrations to have their work reported in the press? When can I be described as a media ‘tart’?

Second-generation Afghans in Iran: Integration and Family Formation
Dr M. Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi
Associate Professor, Department of Demography, University of Tehran
& Fellow (Adjunct), ADSRI

In 2005, around 1.2 million documented Afghans remained in Iran, around 33 percent of whom were second-generation, aged 15-29 who were either born in Iran, or arrived in Iran as children and were subsequently raised and educated in Iran. Education, occupational skills, family dynamics, and economic prospects of the second-generation Afghans in Iran have inspired different values and economic aspirations as compared to the first generation, and thus, the former has different perspective towards life in either of their host- or home society. This seminar is based on the results of a qualitative study conducted in three settings (Mashhad, Tehran and Isfahan), and draws on data collected via 80 in-depth interviews and 6 focus group discussions with second generation Afghans in Iran. The seminar investigates the integration of the second-generation Afghans in Iran, but mainly concentrates on their marriage and family formation.

Tuesday 20

What’s love got to do with it? Homogamy and dyadic approaches to understanding marital instability
Dr Rebecca Kippen
Fellow, ADSRI

Tuesday 27

Migrants' and International students' Psychosocial Adjustment and Transition to the Workplace
Professor Anita Mak
Professor, Centre for Applied Psychology, University of Canberra

This seminar seeks to discuss the emerging issues in the skills utilisation, social integration, and psychological health of migrating Asian talent to Australia, from a cultural learning perspective. The presentation is a synthesis of a series of community and student studies conducted by the speaker and her associates on job search, career development, and psychosocial adjustment of Asian migrants and international students. Overall, the findings suggest the relevance of intercultural social confidence and relations with hosts to the migrants’ and students’ wellbeing, while cultural experiential learning focussed on the development of generic social skills could contribute to their professional preparation and confidence in job search. Implications for facilitating migrants’ and international students’ psychosocial adjustment and transition to the workplace are discussed.

Opting in and out: A Proposal for Research on the Dynamic Aspects of Female Labour Force Participation in Indonesia (PhD Proposal Seminar)
Diahhadi Setyonaluri (Luri)
PhD Candidate, ADSRI