Malaria Transmission in Context: Linking Health, Census, and Ecological Data

by Yara Ghazal, Ilyana Hohenkirk, Tracy Kugler, and Kelly Searle

Malaria, like many vector-borne diseases, impacts health, economic growth, and society. The burden of malaria incidence and death is concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa; in 2020, 95% of all malaria cases and 96% of all deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa (WHO, 2022). Malaria impacts not only population health but also the economic growth of these 32 countries. It is estimated that up to 1.3% of economic growth in this region of Africa is slowed each year due to malaria (CCP-JHU, 2015). Understanding malaria transmission is essential to ending its spread and creating a healthier and more prosperous future for developing nations.

The literature on malaria transmission patterns has shown that several environmental factors impact mosquito and parasite vital rates, and thus affect the transmission intensity, seasonality, and geographical distribution of malaria (Castro, 2017). Temperature and precipitation are the primary climate-based factors that influence malaria transmission patterns. Temperature creates geographical constraints for vector and parasite development. Increasing temperatures have been found to shorten mosquito maturation time and increase feeding frequency. However, areas of extremely high temperatures usually yield smaller, less fecund mosquitoes. In parallel, because mosquitoes often breed in pools formed by rainfall and flooding, the frequency, duration, and intensity of precipitation have a significant influence on mosquito populations.

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IHGIS Research Example: Fertilizer Use from Agricultural Census Data

By Chris M. Boyd

The IPUMS International Historical Geographic Information System (IHGIS) provides subnational data from agricultural and population and housing censuses from around the world. The agricultural census data cover a wide range of information on agricultural inputs, labor, production, and more, which can be used to explore a variety of research questions. IHGIS data can help understand, for instance, which factors contribute to better crop productivity, including the role of fertilizer use. Researchers have used agricultural census data at the subnational level to analyze the negative relationship between farm size and fertilizer overuse in China1; the relationship between maize yield, farm size and fertilizer and irrigation use in Mexico2; the use of chemical fertilizers in direct market farms in the U.S.3; and the environmental sustainability of using fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides in Pakistan4.

To date, IHGIS has released Agricultural Census tables for ten countries (see https://ihgis.ipums.org/dataset-descriptions), including seven developing countries in Africa and the Pacific Islands. These seven datasets include information about fertilizer use, though each measures it in a different way (see Table 1). Despite the differences, these data can reveal broad patterns in the use of fertilizer by farmers among these countries.

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IPUMS Announces 2020 Research Award Recipients

IPUMS research awardsIPUMS is excited to announce the winners of its annual IPUMS Research Awards. These awards honor the best-published research and nominated graduate student papers from 2020 that used IPUMS data to advance or deepen our understanding of social and demographic processes.

IPUMS, developed by and housed at the University of Minnesota, is the world’s largest individual-level population database, providing harmonized data on people in the U.S. and around the world to researchers at no cost.

There are six award categories, and each is tied to the following IPUMS projects:

  • IPUMS USA, providing data from the U.S. decennial censuses, the American Community Survey, and IPUMS CPS from 1850 to the present.
  • IPUMS International, providing harmonized data contributed by more than 100 international statistical office partners; it currently includes information on 500 million people in more than 200 censuses from around the world, from 1960 forward.
  • IPUMS Health Surveys, which makes available the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS).
  • IPUMS Spatial, covering IPUMS NHGIS and IPUMS Terra. NHGIS includes GIS boundary files from 1790 to the present; Terra provides data on population and the environment from 1960 to the present.
  • IPUMS Global Health: providing harmonized data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the Performance Monitoring and Accountability surveys, for low and middle-income countries from the 1980s to the present.
  • IPUMS Time Use, providing time diary data from the U.S. and around the world from 1965 to the present.

Over 2,500 publications based on IPUMS data appeared in journals, magazines, and newspapers worldwide last year. From these publications and from nominated graduate student papers, the award committees selected the 2020 honorees.

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