A growing body of research often indicates that immigrant populations in Western countries enjoy a lower level of mortality in relation to their native-born host populations. In this literature, sex differences in mortality are often reported but substantive analyses of the differences are generally lacking. The present investigation looks at sex differences in life expectancy with specific reference to immigrant and Canadian-born populations in Canada during 1971 and 2001. For these two populations, sex differences in expectation of life at birth are decomposed into cause-of-death components. Immigrants in Canada have a higher life expectancy than their Canadian-born counterparts. In absolute terms, immigrant females enjoy the highest life expectancy. In relative terms, however, immigrant men show a larger longevity advantage, as their expectation of life at birth exceeds that of Canadian-born men by a wider margin than do foreign-born females in relation to Canadian-born females. It is also found that immigrants have a smaller sex differential in life expectancy as compared with the Canadian born. Decomposition analysis shows this is a function of immigrants having smaller sex differences in death rates from heart disease and cancer. Factors thought to underlie these differentials between immigrants and the Canadian born are discussed and suggestions for further research are given.

In order to investigate the association between mean inbreeding coefficient (α) and healthy life expectancy at birth (HALE; years) the present ecological study on 63 countries was done. Statistical analysis showed that HALE negatively and positively correlated with log10α and log10GNI per capita, respectively (p<0.001). It should be noted that log10α and log10GNI per capita were significantly correlated with each other (p<0.001). After controlling for log10GNI per capita, significant negative correlations between log10α and HALE were observed. The countries were stratified according to their GNI per capita into low- and high-income countries. In countries with high income, after controlling for log10GNI per capita, the correlation between HALE at birth and log10α was significant (for males r=−0.399, df=32, p=0.001; for females r=−0.683, df=32, p<0.001). In high-income Asian and African countries, where consanguineous marriage is common, after controlling for log10GNI per capita, the correlation between HALE at birth and log10α was significant (for males r=−0.819, df=8, p=0.004; for females r=−0.936, df=8, p<0.001). It seems that consanguinity influences HALE independent of country income.

Childhood excess weight is probably associated with, or reflected in, parental attitudes. The objective of this study was to study the relationships between childhood excess weight and parental attitudes. The study subjects were 53 boys and 56 girls, aged 6–10, regularly attending schools in Porto Alegre, south Brazil, and one of their parents or caregivers. Attitudes of the parents or caregivers were assessed by the Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFD). Weight and height of the children were measured, parents self-reported their weight and height and body mass indexes were calculated for both. The WHO criteria for overweight and obesity were used for the adults. The CDC criteria for overweight and risk for overweight were used for the corresponding children. Boys presented excess weight more often than girls. The parents of children with excess weight showed higher scores for perceived child weight, concern about child weight, restriction and monitoring. In logistic regression, excess weight in children was associated with perceived child weight, restriction and male sex; pressure to eat was negatively associated with excess BMI. In Porto Alegre, south Brazil, excess body weight in children aged 6–10 is associated with parental perceived child weight and concern about it, monitoring and restriction; being a boy increases the odds of being overweight.

This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of intervention (specifically, intervention by telephone and mails, known as ‘tele-care’) relative to self-help as a weight-loss method. The question of whether there is a correlation between changes in two preference parameters – time discounting (i.e. impatience) and risk aversion – and the level of commitment was examined. The study, spanning a period of 24 weeks in 2006–2007, comprised 118 participants, each of whom was randomly assigned to either the tele-care or the self-help group. A public-health nurse provided support through telephone and mail communications to the tele-care group, aiming to reduce their calorie intake and increase exercise via this intervention. There was a significant decrease in the body weight of the participants of the tele-care group from the baseline; however, there were no significant differences in the weight loss, median time discounting or risk aversion between the two groups. The subsequent analysis for weight loss with changes in time and risk parameters revealed a significant difference in the weight loss in the time-discounting–loss and risk-aversion–gain groups. From the results of the multiple regression analysis, the time discounting was noted to be associated with age, initial BMI and marital status among men, and risk aversion was associated with age and job status among women. There is a possibility that a decrease in time discounting and increase in risk aversion might correlate with the weight loss or effectiveness of commitment in this trial. This study suggests that time discounting and risk aversion may be useful in anti-obesity efforts, since they are accurate criteria of behavioural patterns associated with weight problems.

This study compares the effects of two distinct forms of human capital – income and education – on marital status and childlessness separately by sex in six different countries. Nearly 10 million individual records on individuals aged 16 to 50 were used from censuses from Brazil, Mexico, Panama, South Africa, USA and Venezuela dating from 2000 or later, to analyse the relationship between education, income and marital status and childlessness in men and women. Regarding income, the findings for both outcome variables are strongly consistent across all six countries. Highest-income males and lower-income females have the highest proportion of ever-married and the lowest proportion of childlessness (using a proxy for childlessness: own children in the household or not). There is no corresponding consistency of findings as regards education either between the sexes or among the countries. To conclude, a lower percentage of low-income men are selected by females, because for women male status and resources provided by men are important criteria in mate selection. Therefore a higher proportion of low-income men remain unmarried and childless. Thus selection seems to play a role in modern societies.

Domestic violence and obesity are global public health problems. This study explores associations of domestic violence and obesity in 5015 ever-married, non-pregnant women aged 15–49 years who took part in the 2005 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS). Women's mean body mass index (BMI) was 30.4 kg/m2, and 48% were obese. Thirty-seven per cent reported any prior psychological, physical or sexual domestic violence. Compared with their counterparts, the adjusted odds of being obese were marginally higher among women who reported any prior sexual (aOR=1.31), physical or sexual (aOR=1.18), or psychological, physical or sexual (aOR=1.17) domestic violence. Women who experienced severe or repeated domestic violence – as measured by reported exposure to three or more acts of physical (aOR=1.25), psychological or physical (aOR=1.18), physical or sexual (aOR=1.36), and psychological, physical or sexual (aOR=1.26) domestic violence – had higher adjusted odds of being obese. Marginally significant adjusted dose–response relationships remained between obesity and the number of specific acts of: (1) physical or sexual violence and (2) psychological, physical or sexual domestic violence. Obesity among women in poorer settings like Egypt may partly have its roots in gender subordination, as manifested in women's exposure to multiple acts of domestic violence.

This study is based on a population-based, descriptive questionnaire survey, the objective of which was to elicit the perceptions of women in south-eastern Nigeria on whether possession of economic/household assets by women enhanced their capacity to negotiate reproductive issues with their husbands. The findings show that the respondents believed that possession of economic/household assets by women in their communities might not necessarily increase their negotiation power in their reproductive decision-making. Other factors tend to attenuate the effects of women's possession of economic/household assets on their reproductive bargaining power. Notable among these may be social norms that implicitly arrogate control of the assets owned by the conjugal couple to the man, even when they are bought by the women. Planners of reproductive health intervention projects, policy-makers and researchers need to be aware of such sociocultural specific phenomena, which do not fit with widely held international beliefs.

In the early 1990s, psychologist Richard Lynn published papers documenting average reaction times and decision times in samples of nine-year-olds taken from across the world. After summarizing these data, Lynn interpreted his results as evidence of national and racial differences in decision time and general intelligence. Others have also interpreted Lynn's data as evidence of racial differences in decision time and intelligence. However, comparing Lynn's summaries with his original reports shows that Lynn misreported and omitted some of his own data. Once these errors are fixed the rankings of nations in Lynn's datasets are unstable across different decision time measures. This instability, as well as within-race heterogeneity and between-race overlap in decision times, implies that Lynn's reaction time data do not permit generalizations about the decision times and intelligence of people of different races.