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Title: Research Note on the Importance of a Holistic Approach for Population Studies
This research note illustrates the importance of a holistic approach to family demography and children’s well-being. Using the family configurations published in a previous study, we show that a configurational measure of family patterns predicts better the country-level proportion of stunted and wasted children across 75 low- and middle-income countries than 20 single family-related variables, world regions, and the Human Development Index. We contend that demographers need to do a better job of measuring social systems because individuals’ choices are influenced by contexts that are better represented with measures that capture multiple related factors (holistic approach) than with a single variable (analytical approach).  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1729185
NSF-PAR ID:
10340617
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Population Studies
ISSN:
0032-4728
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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