Using cell phone data to curb the spread of Malaria

A great example of how the growing availability of data is providing new insights on very important health questions.

From the HSPH newsletter:

New research that combines cell phone data from 15 million people in Kenya with detailed information on the regional incidence of malaria has revealed, on the largest scale so far, how human travel patterns contribute to the disease's spread. The findings from researchers at HSPH and seven other institutions indicate that malaria, in large part, emanates from Kenya's Lake Victoria region and spreads east, chiefly toward the capital, Nairobi.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2012-releases/cell-phone-data-malaria.html

Article:

Quantifying the Impact of Human Mobility on Malaria

Amy Wesolowski, Nathan Eagle, Andrew J. Tatem, David L. Smith, Abdisalan M. Noor, Robert W. Snow, Caroline O. Buckee

Science 12 October 2012: Vol. 338 no. 6104 pp. 267-270
DOI: 10.1126/science.1223467 

Abstract

Human movements contribute to the transmission of malaria on spatial scales that exceed the limits of mosquito dispersal. Identifying the sources and sinks of imported infections due to human travel and locating high-risk sites of parasite importation could greatly improve malaria control programs. Here, we use spatially explicit mobile phone data and malaria prevalence information from Kenya to identify the dynamics of human carriers that drive parasite importation between regions. Our analysis identifies importation routes that contribute to malaria epidemiology on regional spatial scales.

 

 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6104/267

An Unusual Effect of Irish Migration - Viral Riverdancing

A sign of the times I suppose. Dozens of people breaking into river-dancing at an Australian train station (viewed 230,000 or so times since yesterday). I really hope this becomes a wider phenomenon. So wide that eventually a bailout renegotiation is agreed just to stop it spreading.

Fact of the day

Working on a paper on migration and health. Most interesting statistic of the day (from OECD 2009) is that 3 per cent of the world's population live outside of the country they were born in, or about 190 million people.

CReAM Working Paper on Effects of Migration on Blood Pressure and Hypertension

Interesting working paper, following on from a recent JHE paper that looked at the effect on mental health.

CReAM Discussion Paper No 24/10

Natural Experiment Evidence on the Effect of Migration on Blood Pressure and Hypertension

John Gibson*, Steven Stillman**, David McKenzie† and Halahingano Rohorua‡

* University of Waikato and Motu Economic and Public Policy Research ** Motu, University of Waikato, IZA and CreAM † Development Research Group, World Bank, IZA and CreAM ‡ University of Waikato

Non-Technical Abstract

Over 200 million people live outside their country of birth and experience large gains in material well-being by moving to where wages are higher. But the effect of this migration on health is less clear and existing evidence is ambiguous because of the potential for self- selection bias. In this paper, we use a natural experiment, comparing successful and unsuccessful applicants to a migration lottery to experimentally estimate the impact of migration on measured blood pressure and hypertension. Hypertension is a leading global health problem, as well as being an important health measure that responds quickly to migration. We use various econometric estimators to form bounds on the treatment effects since there appears to be selective non-compliance in the natural experiment. Even with these bounds the results suggest significant and persistent increases in blood pressure and hypertension, which have implications for future health budgets given the recent worldwide increases in immigration.

Keywords: Bloodpressure,Hypertension,Lottery,Migration,Naturalexperiment. JEL Classification: C21, I12, J61.

The Irish and America's Law and Order Problem

Immigration: America's nineteenth century "law and order problem"?

New NBER Working Paper No. 16266
Howard Bodenhorn, Carolyn M. Moehling, Anne Morrison Piehl
Issued in August 2010

Past studies of the empirical relationship between immigration and crime during the first major wave of immigration have focused on violent crime in cities and have relied on data with serious limitations regarding nativity information. We analyze administrative data from Pennsylvania prisons, with high quality information on nativity and demographic characteristics. The latter allow us to construct incarceration rates for detailed population groups using U.S. Census data. The raw gap in incarceration rates for the foreign and native born is large, in accord with the extremely high concern at the time about immigrant criminality. But adjusting for age and gender greatly narrows that observed gap. Particularly striking are the urban/rural differences. Immigrants were concentrated in large cities where reported crime rates were higher. However, within rural counties, the foreign born had much higher incarceration rates than the native born. The interaction of nativity with urban residence explains much of the observed aggregate differentials in incarceration rates. Finally, we find that the foreign born, especially the Irish, consistently have higher incarceration rates for violent crimes, but from 1850 to 1860 the natives largely closed the gap with the foreign born for property offenses.

World Bank Working Paper: Diasporas

Diasporas

Author Info
Beine, Michel
Docquier, Frederic
Ozden, Caglar

Abstract

Migration flows are shaped by a complex combination of self-selection and out-selection mechanisms. In this paper, the authors analyze how existing diasporas (the stock of people born in a country and living in another one) affect the size and human-capital structure of current migration flows. The analysis exploits a bilateral data set on international migration by educational attainment from 195 countries to 30 developed countries in 1990 and 2000. Based on simple micro-foundations and controlling for various determinants of migration, the analysis finds that diasporas increase migration flows, lower the average educational level and lead to higher concentration of low-skill migrants. Interestingly, diasporas explain the majority of the variability of migration flows and selection. This suggests that, without changing the generosity of family reunion programs, education-based selection rules are likely to have a moderate impact. The results are highly robust to the econometric techniques, accounting for the large proportion of zeros and endogeneity problems.

The Irish Students Abroad

An article in yesterday's Irish Independent reports a jump in the numbers of Irish undergraduate and post-graduate students at college elsewhere in Europe. Apparently, the proportion of Irish students abroad almost doubled to 13.8pc between 2002 and 2006 (above the EU average of 2.6pc), according to the Eurydice Key Education Data report. It is also indicated that almost 18,000 Irish students were studying for primary degrees or post-graduate qualifications elsewhere in Europe in 2006. There are also about 5,000 Irish students in the US.

Surveying Migrant Groups: A comparison of sampling methods

Recent Research by McKenzie and Mistiaen published in Journal of Royal Statistical Society

Few representative surveys of households of migrants exist, limiting our ability to study the effects of international migration on sending families. We report the results of an experiment that was designed to compare the performance of three alternative survey methods in collecting data from Japanese-Brazilian families, many of whom send migrants to Japan. The three surveys that were conducted were households selected randomly from a door-to-door listing using the Brazilian census to select census blocks, a snowball survey using Nikkei community groups to select the seeds and an intercept point survey that was collected at Nikkei community gatherings, ethnic grocery stores, sports clubs and other locations where family members of migrants are likely to congregate. We analyse how closely well-designed snowball and intercept point surveys can approach the much more expensive census-based method in terms of giving information on the characteristics of migrants, the level of remittances received and the incidence and determinants of return migration. Copyright (c) 2009 Royal Statistical Society.