The goal is to continue to develop, explicate, and disseminate models of demographic processes and methods for measuring demographic events and rates. The underlying theme of the project has been that we must be able to measure demographic phenomena not only for their intrinsic interest but in order to have a firm basis for assessing their causes and consequences. Much of the work is directed toward assessing levels of fertility and mortality and the factors determining these levels. We have been, and will be, concerned with measurement of contraceptive efficacy, infertility, sterility, breastfeeding (and its impact on the health and survival of infants), and mortality at older ages. Specifically, we aim to carry out: studies in formal demography, to develop new and improved ways of estimating fertility and mortality and assessing quality of data; studies of patterns of mortality in old age and in Far Eastern countries (which have a characteristic older male mortality pattern); studies, both methodological and substantive, of proximate determinants of fertility; and studies of new statistical techniques for analyzing demographic data. development of microcomputer software for the techniques desired.
