Asia-Pacific Population Journal - Volume 9, Issue 2, 1994

The challenge will be to adopt IEC activities for minority groups, who currently express high levels of demand and the lowest levels of knowledge and use of contraception.

There are major variations in fertility and mortality patterns among the ethnic populations in China, mainly owing to different stages of economic development.

There is an urgent need to plan for the transfer of necessary resources to the community in order for it to cope with the increasing burden of caring for the elderly.

Comparable household-level survey data for the same population at two times are essential for many types of analysis in which age, period and cohort effects must be distinguished. Until recently, it was rare to have usable micro-level data from developing countries collected at two times, far enough apart to allow for significant demographic change in the interim (Hermalin, Entwisle and Myers, 1985). The availability of data sets from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for many of the same countries in which the World Fertility Survey was carried out has started to improve the situation greatly, enabling cross-national comparisons of changes over a decade or more for countries at different stages of the demographic transition. A growing number of countries have conducted a second DHS survey, and third surveys are planned in some countries, e.g. Indonesia.