K S James - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by K S James

BMC Public Health

Background The link between marital status and health differences has long been a topic of debate... more Background The link between marital status and health differences has long been a topic of debate. The substantial research on marriage and health has been conducted under two important hypotheses: marital protection and marriage selection. While the majority of evidence on the marriage-health relationship using these hypotheses comes from developed countries, there is a lack of evidence from Asia, particularly from India. Objectives The current study examines theoretical frameworks of marriage i.e., marital protection and marriage selection in the Indian setting concurrently, bringing substantial empirical evidence to explore the link between marriage and health, considering this subject in the context of self-reported health (SRH). Secondly, this study will aid in investigating age and gender differences in marriage and health. Methods Using the Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health (SAGE), a cohort study of individuals aged 50 years and older with a small section of individuals...

Supplemental material, Appendix-Figure-III-_a_ for Comparison of Population Aging in Europe and A... more Supplemental material, Appendix-Figure-III-_a_ for Comparison of Population Aging in Europe and Asia Using a Time-Consistent and Comparative Aging Measure by Arun Balachandran, Joop de Beer, K. S. James, Leo van Wissen and Fanny Janssen in Journal of Aging and Health

Supplemental material, Appendix-Figure-I-_b_ for Comparison of Population Aging in Europe and Asi... more Supplemental material, Appendix-Figure-I-_b_ for Comparison of Population Aging in Europe and Asia Using a Time-Consistent and Comparative Aging Measure by Arun Balachandran, Joop de Beer, K. S. James, Leo van Wissen and Fanny Janssen in Journal of Aging and Health

Supplemental material, Appendix-Figure-I-_a_ for Comparison of Population Aging in Europe and Asi... more Supplemental material, Appendix-Figure-I-_a_ for Comparison of Population Aging in Europe and Asia Using a Time-Consistent and Comparative Aging Measure by Arun Balachandran, Joop de Beer, K. S. James, Leo van Wissen and Fanny Janssen in Journal of Aging and Health

Supplemental material, Appendix-Figure-2-_b_ for Comparison of Population Aging in Europe and Asi... more Supplemental material, Appendix-Figure-2-_b_ for Comparison of Population Aging in Europe and Asia Using a Time-Consistent and Comparative Aging Measure by Arun Balachandran, Joop de Beer, K. S. James, Leo van Wissen and Fanny Janssen in Journal of Aging and Health

SAGE Open, 2021

Family has always been an important unit of analysis in an effort to improve and understand human... more Family has always been an important unit of analysis in an effort to improve and understand human development. Studying the changes in the institution of family and households keeping in view the demographic, social, and economic transitions also becomes imperative. So far, in our knowledge, there are very few studies based in India have investigated the household size and family formation patterns, while a few of them have looked into its possible causes or associations and demographic, economic, and social repercussions. In particular, as per our knowledge, there is no evidence on who is losing and who is gaining among family members due to the unprecedented transition in family forms in India. This paper serves a twofold purpose as first it seeks to explore and enrich the field of family demography in India by studying the existing evidence in the field as well as allied fields to understand how family serves as the nuclei directing individuals and communities toward certain beha...

Scientific Reports, 2021

Child undernutrition remains high in India with far-reaching consequences for child health and de... more Child undernutrition remains high in India with far-reaching consequences for child health and development. Anthropometry reflects undernutrition. We examined the state-level trends in underweight, stunting, and wasting prevalence and inequality by living standards using four rounds of the National Family Health Surveys in 26 states in India, conducted in 1992–1993, 1998–1999, 2005–2006, and 2015–2016. The average annual reduction (AAR) for underweight ranged from 0.04 percentage points (pp) (95% CI − 0.12, 0.20) in Haryana to 1.05 pp (95% CI 0.88, 1.22) in West Bengal for underweight; 0.35 pp (95% CI 0.11, 0.59) in Manipur to 1.47 (95% CI 1.19, 1.75) in Himachal Pradesh for stunting; and − 0.65 pp (95% CI − 0.77, − 0.52) in Haryana to 0.36 pp (95% CI 0.22, 0.51) in Bihar & Jharkhand for wasting. We find that change in the pp difference between children with the poorest and richest household living standards varied by states: statistically significant decline (increase) was observed...

The Lancet Global Health, 2020

Ageing and Society, 2019

A continuous rise of female life expectancy above that of males among older adults in India and C... more A continuous rise of female life expectancy above that of males among older adults in India and China may give the impression that the relative gender gap in health in these countries is decreasing. However, given the systemic gender bias against older females in these countries across multiple dimensions of health, a fuller understanding of the gender gap in health calls for a multi-dimensional perspective. We estimate a multi-dimensional old-age threshold (MOAT) that specifies different old-age thresholds for female and male populations which accommodates multiple dimensions related to physical, intellectual and general health. We use the MOAT to evaluate the multi-dimensional gender gap in India and China by differencing the MOAT for females with that of males. Females in both countries have a lower MOAT than their male counterparts, indicating an earlier advent of ‘old age’ for females. The multi-dimensional estimates of the gender gap are also higher than the estimates based on...

Annales de démographie historique, 2000

Dans cet article, nous tentons d'evaluer la qualite des registres paroissiaux dresses dans le... more Dans cet article, nous tentons d'evaluer la qualite des registres paroissiaux dresses dans les eglises catholiques du Kerala (Inde) qui relevent du rite latin ou du rite syrien, dans l'optique d'etudier le comportement demographique au XXe siecle des populations concernees, grâce a une analyse par numerateur. Les registres paroissiaux des eglises catholiques indiennes de rite latin ont quatre siecles d'existence et, par leur bonne tenue, ils s'imposent comme une source particulierement pertinente pour les historiens demographes. Les registres de sepultures semblent d'excellentes qualites et plus fiables que ceux des baptemes. Les ratios naissances/deces et naissances/mariages fournissent d'utiles apercus sur les formes de la transition demographique parmi les catholiques indiens de rites latin ou syrien.

South Asia has the highest rate of child malnutrition in the world, despite rapid economic growth... more South Asia has the highest rate of child malnutrition in the world, despite rapid economic growth compared to other regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. Known as the ‘South Asian enigma’ this feature is partly attributed to the low status of women in South Asian societies. This paper examines this tenet in the context of India, with particular emphasis on possible differences between rural and urban scenarios. The empirical evidence reveals some important differences, which are relevant for policies relating to women’s empowerment against a backdrop of rapid urbanization.

Economic and political weekly

This paper attempts to bring out how far the quality of response in the NFHS data varies with the... more This paper attempts to bring out how far the quality of response in the NFHS data varies with the changing educational levels of the respondents for standard demographic variables like age and sex. The analysis of the data shows that information gathered from uneducated respondents is more erroneous than that from educated groups.

Population Ageing in India

Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, 2013

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2000

Kerala Studies that use short-run analyses of demographic variables to understand historical popu... more Kerala Studies that use short-run analyses of demographic variables to understand historical populations have gained predominance during the last two decades, particularly in the context of developed countries. Shortterm analysis is often thought to provide greater insights into a population's demographic and economic history. In addition, short-run analysis is also considered to be a good measure to examine even a contemporary population. 1 In the short run, several important variables in uencing vital events, such as age structure and social/cultural indicators, remain constant, thus limiting the number of exogenous and endogenous variables. Of the exogenous factors, economic variables ought to play an important role. Another important exogenous variable in the short run is weather. However, since adverse weather condi

Indian Economic & Social History Review, 1998

The discipline of historical demography has received little attention in India, while it had been... more The discipline of historical demography has received little attention in India, while it had been a major area of research in the West, and attracted a large number of researchers. The studies on Indian historical demography mainly confined themselves to investigations of the ...

Measuring population ageing based on a fixed old-age threshold like 65 ignores increasing life ex... more Measuring population ageing based on a fixed old-age threshold like 65 ignores increasing life expectancy among elderly people. Sanderson and Scherbov introduced the prospective age approach based on the age at which the remaining life expectancy is 15 (RLE15). Their approach is timehorizon consistent, but ignores crosscountry differences in reaching RLE15. We compare population ageing in Europe and Asia using a new method that is consistent over time and between countries. Our old-age threshold is the age at which the adult survival ratio equals the proportion of adults surviving to the prospective old-age threshold of the benchmark country (Japan). Our old-age threshold is lower and our share of elderly is higher than were found using the prospective age approach for countries with low adult survival. Our method also revealed greater differences between the shares of elderly in Europe (15.7%) and Asia (7.6%) than were found using the RLE15 method.

SSM-Population Health, 2019

Population ageing measured through a fixed old-age threshold like 60+ or 65+ ignores the other im... more Population ageing measured through a fixed old-age threshold like 60+ or 65+ ignores the other important dimensions of ageing. There has been changes among the older persons in multiple dimensions that corresponds to quantity of life years lived as well as the quality of life. The existing multi-dimensional measures also consider the characteristics within a fixed old-age threshold framework which does not account for significant improvements in life expectancy over the years.

We propose a new Multidimensional Old Age Threshold (MOAT) measure that accommodates different dimensions of quantity and quality of older persons. We achieve this through a modified framework of the Characteristic Approach. Our measure incorporates a forward-looking approach to measure ageing and specifies an old-age threshold for different countries after accounting for different dimensions of life expectancy, health and human capital. This method is more suitable for comparison across countries with distinct demographic and health achievements.

The empirical application of our method using selected countries from Europe and Asia shows that the relative performance of countries differs in terms of MOAT in comparison to estimates based on existing measures, primarily due to the inclusion of the quality dimensions. Countries that have better performance in life expectancy, health and human capital have higher values of MOAT and a lower ‘burden’ of older persons in a cross-country perspective in comparison to the existing measures.