The almost sure behavior of the oscillation modulus for PL-process and cumulative hazard process under random censorship

The local behavior of oscillation modulus of the product-limit (PL) process and the cumulative hazard process is investigated when the data are subjected to random censoring. Laws of the iterated logarithm of local oscillation modulus for the PL-process and the cumulative hazard process are established. Some of these results are applied to obtain the almost sure best rates of convergence for various types of density estimators as well as the Bahadur-Kiefer type process.

A study on population dynamics in“Belt&Road”countries and their implications

China’s Belt&Road(“B&R”)initiative has attracted much attention in recent years.Many studies have assessed the potential impacts of this initiative from the economic,political,foreign relations,and military perspectives.However,very little attention has been paid to examine the opportunities and challenges of this new initiative from a demographic perspective.Therefore,this study investigates into the population dynamics of 65 countries in the B&R region,and explores the demographic dynamics of this regional cooperation model.Based on graphic visualization,the demographic heterogeneities within the B&R region,in terms of current stages of demographic transitions,population age structure,and demographic windows of opportunities have been revealed.Furthermore,a model-based cluster analysis has been conducted to classify the B&R countries into two groups.One group consists of countries with younger population,low education access,and larger gender gap in the labor market,while the other group comprises of more aged population and has better performances in economic development,education enrolment,and female labor participation.The demographic windows of opportunities in the former group will remain open for the coming decades;whereas the windows have already closed or is about to close very soon in the latter group.The former group should take lessons from the latter concerning how to better prepare themselves for the demographic transition.Moreover,the curvilinear relationship between wealth and well-being has a complicated structure and the B&R initiative should focus not only on economic development but also on the human well-being.

Gender gap in life expectancy in Hong Kong, 1986-2016

Over the past decades,life expectancy in Hong Kong has been increasing steadily.However,the gender gap in life expectancy has experienced a comparatively high level of plateauing state.Based on data from the Human Mortality Database and the official statistics,an age-and cause-decomposition method was used to analyze contributions of main age groups and major causes of death to the gender gap over the period 1986-2016.The results showed that a female-advantage in the mortality among those aged 25 years and above was mainly responsible for the male-female gap in life expectancy in Hong Kong.In consideration of major causes of death,lower female mortality from non-communicable diseases,particularly malignant neoplasms,and pneumonia at older age groups,was the major contributor to the female-favored life expectancy.Public efforts to reduce excess mortality rates from non-communicable diseases and pneumonia among older male population may help narrow the gender gap in life expectancy in Hong Kong.