Content area
Abstract
Infant mortality, AIDS and emigration from Africa are among the critical factors effecting population dynamics in Africa. These factors deplete African human resources during the early, and the middle and most productive year of life. This dissertation focuses on these factors, each in a separate chapter. Chapter one gives the introduction.
Chapter two examines whether accessibility to health facilities influences infant and child mortality levels in rural Uganda. Proportional hazard analysis was used to estimate the effects of accessibility to health centers, hospitals and private clinics on infant and child mortality, using the 1988 Demographic and health Survey. Accessibility to health centers was found to significantly affect childhood mortality, particularly of children born to uneducated mothers.
Relating to AIDS and condom use in Africa, chapter three focuses on two major competing behavioral change theoretical frameworks: the individual change model and the social change model. The question about these models arises from the fact that condom use intervention campaigns are inclined to the former. Hence, data from Ghana AIDS KAP study was used to examined the relevance of the latter on condom use in Africa. Multivariate analysis showed that the social change model was strongly relevant because individual's intentions to use condoms were strongly associated with perceptions of whether friends use condoms. Condom use campaign designs that incorporate the social environment aspect were recommended.
Chapter four focuses on emigration from Africa. The concern is that little is known about African emigrants. Even in the US where there is a lot of interest about specific migration groups, little attention has focused African migrants. Thus using the 1990 and 1980 US Census, the relative of socioeconomic status of African migrants was examined by comparing their Earnings and education qualification-occupation Matching to that of Caribbean born and native born blacks. In the 1980 sample, the Africans had the lowest income and were the most mismatched. In 1990 Africans who had stayed for more than ten years in the US significantly earned more, although still they were significantly more mismatched, than native born blacks.
