Infant mortality of Sami and settlers in Northern Sweden: the era of colonization 1750-1900.

Unlabelled: The study deals with infant mortality (IMR) that is one of the most important aspects of indigenous vulnerability.

Background: The Sami are one of very few indigenous peoples with an experience of a positive mortality transition.

Objective: Using unique mortality data from the period 1750-1900 Sami and the colonizers in northern Sweden are compared in order to reveal an eventual infant mortality transition.

Improvements in Indigenous mortality in the Northern Territory over four decades.

Objective: To provide the first report of long-term mortality trends over recent decades for an Indigenous Australian population. Very little information is available about improvements over time, or lack thereof, in the health status of Indigenous Australians.

Methods: Internally consistent time series of deaths and population data were produced for the Indigenous population of the Northern Territory (NT) for 1966--2001.

Applying Lee-Carter under conditions of variable mortality decline.

The Lee-Carter method of mortality forecasting assumes an invariant age component and most applications have adopted a linear time component. The use of the method with Australian data is compromised by significant departures from linearity in the time component and changes over time in the age component. We modify the method to adjust the time component to reproduce the age distribution of deaths, rather than total deaths, and to determine the optimal fitting period in order to address non-linearity in the time component.

On the measurement of relative and absolute income-related health inequality.

In recent work on international comparisons of income-related inequalities in health, the concentration index has been used as a measure of health inequality. A drawback of this measure is that it is sensitive to whether it is estimated with respect to health or morbidity. An alternative would be to use the generalized concentration index that is based on absolute rather than relative health differences.

Comparing health inequalities among men aged 18-65 years in Australia and England using the SF-36.

Objective: To compare the distribution of the domains and summary scores of the SF-36 health survey by occupation-related social classes in England and Australia for employed males age 18-65 years.

Method: Relative and absolute measures of inequality based on the concentration index were used to examine the distribution of indicators of reported health based on domains and summary scores of the SF-36 across occupation-related social classes in both countries.

Results: The degree of inequality is most pronounced in the domains and summary scores of the SF-36 representing aspects of physical health.