Anders Brändström

High-risk families: The unequal distribution of infant mortality in nineteenth-century Sweden

An analysis of infant mortality (based on 133,448 births) in two regions, Sundsvall and Skellefteå, in north-eastern Sweden during the nineteenth century shows that infant mortality was highly clustered with a relatively small number of families accounting for a large proportion of all infant deaths. Using logistic regression, two important factors were found to be associated with high-risk families: (i) a biological component evidenced by an over-representation of women who had experienced stillbirths, and (ii) a social component indicated by an increased risk among women who had remarried. The results strengthen the argument for using the family rather than the single child as the unit of analysis. The clustering of infant deaths points to the need to re-evaluate our interpretations of the causes of infant mortality in the past.

Longitudinal databases - sources for analyzing the life-course: Characteristics, Difficulties and Possibilities

Longitudinal databases - sources for analyzing the life course : Characteristics, difficulties and possibilities

Gene-Lifestyle Interactions in Complex Diseases: Design and Description of the GLACIER and VIKING Studies.

Most complex diseases have well-established genetic and non-genetic risk factors. In some instances, these risk factors are likely to interact, whereby their joint effects convey a level of risk that is either significantly more or less than the sum of these risks. Characterizing these gene-environment interactions may help elucidate the biology of complex diseases, as well as to guide strategies for their targeted prevention. In most cases, the detection of gene-environment interactions will require sample sizes in excess of those needed to detect the marginal effects of the genetic and environmental risk factors. Although many consortia have been formed, comprising multiple diverse cohorts to detect gene-environment interactions, few robust examples of such interactions have been discovered. This may be because combining data across studies, usually through meta-analysis of summary data from the contributing cohorts, is often a statistically inefficient approach for the detection of gene-environment interactions. Ideally, single, very large and well-genotyped prospective cohorts, with validated measures of environmental risk factor and disease outcomes should be used to study interactions. The presence of strong founder effects within those cohorts might further strengthen the capacity to detect novel genetic effects and gene-environment interactions. Access to accurate genealogical data would also aid in studying the diploid nature of the human genome, such as genomic imprinting (parent-of-origin effects). Here we describe two studies from northern Sweden (the GLACIER and VIKING studies) that fulfill these characteristics.

Life histories of single parents and illegitimate infants in nineteenth-century Sweden.

The importance of legitimacy and illegitimacy for differing levels of infant mortality has generally been left out of the discussion of historical demographers. This essay presents tentative findings for the Sundsvall area of Sweden, which is being studied in a recent project on the decline of infant and childhood mortality in the Nordic countries. The focus is on the complete reproductive histories of single mothers and the life expectancies among infants born to women who at least once in their reproductive life history experienced the birth of an illegitimate child. In Sundsvall, industrialization only temporarily affected the illegitimacy ratio, but its effect was obvious even in agrarian parishes. The number of illegitimate children per woman remained relatively stable over time, with the exception of the town of Sundsvall. It was more common in the urban environment to give birth to several illegitimate children. Mortality was also higher among these infants, but the negative effects can be seen equ...

TWO CITIES Urban Migration and Settlement in Nineteenth-Century Sweden

This article examines how migrants settled and formed families in two Swedish towns—Linköping and Sundsvall—with different occupational structures during industrialization. Sex- and socio-economic differentials in the rural–urban and urban–urban migration are discussed, as well as persistence rates in the new urban environment among different social groups. Analysis of in-migration and marriage patterns shows that social and geographical endogamy are equally significant in the two towns. Migrants tended primarily to marry migrants and town-born primarily to marry town-born. Moreover, relatively closed marriage boundaries were found among the in-migrants: those that came from an urban background tended to find an “urban partner.”

Ageing - a cross-cutting research and policy challenge.

The ageing population is a global phenomenon. Understanding its consequences is of key importance for our common future and will affect economic and social structures. It will also affect welfare systems and healthcare and the role of the elderly in society. With much better health and longer life expectancy they will play increasingly important political and cultural roles – and much more active ones. In Sweden the population over age 65 has doubled and the proportion of age groups of 80+ has quadrupled since the 1950s. In 2020, when the large birth cohorts of the 1940s reach age 80 and beyond, their numbers will grow by 45% in just a decade. In the years 2040–50 the proportion of the elderly will increase from 17% of today to 25% of the

The impact of feeding patterns on infant mortality in a nineteenth century Swedish parish

An analysis of the relationship between infant feeding practices and infant mortality in nineteenth-century Sweden is presented. The data concern the parish of Nedertornea and are from a variety of sources including parish records vital statistics and the Demographic Data Base at the University of Umea Sweden. The relative impact of improved medical services and changing breast-feeding patterns are explored. Regional differences are also considered. (ANNOTATION)

Linnaeus: Alive and well

Carl Linne, more widely known as Carolus Linnaeus, died in 1778 but his spirit lives on in the many classification systems he developed, as well as in a more recent Swedish innovation, the Linnaeus Database, a major contributor to an understanding of ageing from a life course perspective. Linnaeus is widely regarded as the founder of modern taxonomy, responsible (in 1735) for introducing the concept of hierarchical ordering of botanical and zoological classification. (Published: 12 January 2011) Citation: Global Health Action 2011, 4 : 5760 - DOI: 10.3402/gha.v4i0.5760

Biometric Modeling n the Study of Infant Mortality: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Sweden

In this study we investigate a well-known biometric model of infant mortality that has been used both to distinguish major causes of mortality before 1 year of age and to examine historical data to identify possible underregistration of infant mortality particularly that which occurred shortly after birth. We show that arguments for the under-registration of infant deaths based solely on the biometric model cannot be supported empirically and are likely due to mis-specifications of the model as well as inappropriate methods for estimating the parameters of interest. The study uses data for 21 parishes in nineteenth-century Sweden. (EXCERPT)

Personality-based Knowledge Extraction for Privacy-preserving Data Analysis

In this paper, we present a differential privacy preserving approach, which extracts personality-based knowledge to serve privacy guarantee data analysis on personal sensitive data. Based on the approach, we further implement an end-to-end privacy guarantee system, KaPPA, to provide researchers iterative data analysis on sensitive data. The key challenge for differential privacy is determining a reasonable amount of privacy budget to balance privacy preserving and data utility. Most of the previous work applies unified privacy budget to all individual data, which leads to insufficient privacy protection for some individuals while over-protecting others. In KaPPA, the proposed personality-based privacy preserving approach automatically calculates privacy budget for each individual. Our experimental evaluations show a significant trade-off of sufficient privacy protection and data utility.