The mechanics of the baby boom: Unveiling the role of the epidemiologic transition.

Recent research on the baby boom and its causes has shown that common explanations, such as the recuperation of births following the Great Depression or Second World War, are not sufficient to account for the phenomenon. However, that research has stressed the role of increasing nuptiality. In this paper, we argue that the increase in survivorship of children and young people that resulted from the epidemiologic transition accounted for a large portion of the increased number of births during the baby boom. We use a microsimulation model to assess the respective roles of mortality, nuptiality, fertility, and immigration on the size and dynamics of the boom in Quebec, Canada. Results show that decreasing mortality contributed significantly to the baby boom, along with immigration and nuptiality changes, while fertility rates attenuated the phenomenon. These results substantiate the hypothesis that the epidemiologic transition was an important cause of the baby boom.

Sea-level rise and coastal wetlands.

This paper seeks to quantify the impact of a1-m sea-level rise on coastal wetlands in 86 developing countries and territories. It is found that approximately 68 % of coastal wetlands in these countries are at risk. A large percentage of this estimated loss is found in Europe and Central Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific, as well as in the Middle East and North Africa. A small number of countries will be severely affected. China and Vietnam(in East Asia and the Pacific), Libya and Egypt (in the Middle East and North Africa), and Romania and Ukraine (in Europe and Central Asia) will bear most losses. In economic terms, the loss of coastal wetlands is likely to exceed $703 million per year in 2000 US dollars.

A Geography of Unmarried Cohabitation in the Americas.

BACKGROUND: In the context of increasing cohabitation and growing demand for understanding the driving forces behind the cohabitation boom, most analyses have been carried out at a national level, not accounting for regional heterogeneity within countries. OBJECTIVE: This paper presents the geography of unmarried cohabitation in the Americas. We offer a large-scale, cross-national perspective together with small-area estimates of cohabitation. We decided to produce this map because: (i) geography unveils spatial heterogeneity and challenges explanatory frameworks that may work at the international level but have low explanatory power in regard to intra-national variation. (ii) we argue that historical pockets of cohabitation can still be identified by examining the current geography of cohabitation. (iii) our map is a first step toward understanding whether the recent increase in cohabitation is an intensification of pre-existing traditions or whether it has different roots that also imply a new geography. METHODS: Census microdata from 39 countries and 19,000 local units have been pulled together to map the prevalence of cohabitation among women. RESULTS: The results show inter- and intra-national regional contrasts. The highest rates of cohabitation are found in areas of Central America, the Caribbean, Colombia and Peru. The lowest rates are mainly found in the United States and Mexico. In all countries the spatial autocorrelation statistics indicates substantial spatial heterogeneity. CONCLUSIONS: Our results raise the question as to which forces have shaped these patterns and remind us that such forces need to be taken into account to understand recent patterns, particularly increases, in cohabitation.

Policy and Fertility, a Case Study of the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan.

In 2006, the Quebec government implemented a parental leave program more generous than the scheme available through the Canadian federal Employment Insurance (EI) program. It was aimed at maintaining the personal disposable income after a birth, especially for women whose income exceeds the maximum insurable earnings of EI. In this article, we assess whether the implementation of the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP) was associated with an increase in the fertility in Quebec, especially for highly educated women. We use data from the rotating panels of the Canadian Labor Force Survey. We test the effect of the implementation of the QPIP on fertility by comparing Quebec and Ontario, which kept the federal EI scheme, before and after the implementation of the QPIP. We adapt the difference in differences method (DiD) to the modeling of the fertility schedule using Poisson regression. We estimate fertility by educational levels within each of the four groups of the DiD design by integrating the estimated fertility schedules. Our results show that the implementation of the QPIP was associated with an increase in fertility in Quebec. The magnitude of the increase varies by educational levels: 17% for women who did not complete secondary education, 46% for those who completed it, and 27% for women who earned a university diploma.

Association Between Tail-Biting and Intestinal Microbiota Composition in Pigs.

Tail-biting (TB) in pigs is a serious behavioral disorder. It is an important challenge in swine production as it impacts animal welfare and health and the economics and safety of the pork meat supply chain. To prevent TB, approaches including enrichment material and tail docking are proposed but none are optimal. Nutrition appears to be an important factor in TB behavior, perhaps by modulating the intestinal microbiota (IM). Our aim was to assess the association between TB behavior and IM in pigs through comparisons of IM in groups of biter, bitten and non-biter/non-bitten pigs. Each group composed of 12 pigs was formed at the beginning of the growing/finishing phase based on a target behavior analysis centered on TB behavior for the biter group and a score of damages caused to the tail for the bitten group. Blood and fecal samples were collected from each pig during a TB episode, at time 0, t0, and when the TB episode was considered finished, 4 weeks later, at time 1, t1. Serum cortisol level was determined by ELISA and used as an indicator of stress. The pig's fecal microbiota was analyzed from DNA extracted from freshly collected fecal matter using amplicon sequencing of the V4 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene. Serum cortisol levels were significantly higher in either the biter or bitten pig groups compared to the negative control group (p = 0.02 and p = 0.01, respectively). The microbiota alpha-diversity was not significantly different between all groups, biter, bitten and negative control. Analyses of beta-diversity, however, revealed a significant difference between either the biter or the bitten group in comparison to the non-biter/non-bitten negative control group in terms of structure and composition of the microbiota. Lactobacillus were significantly more abundant in the negative control group compared to the two other groups (p = 0.001). No significant difference was revealed between the biter and bitten groups. Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) confirmed that lactobacilli were more abundant in the negative control group. Our study indicates that TB behavior is associated with the IM composition in pigs.