Biological Implications of Human Mobility (eBook)

Slawomir Koziel is a biological anthropologist based at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Wroclaw, Poland. Actually he works as an associate professor in Anthropology Unit in Wroclaw acting as a director. He is a Member or Fellow of several national and international professional bodies, most notable among them are the International Fellow of the Unit for the Biocultural Variation and Obesity (UBVO), Oxford University, U.K., and the Chief of the Auxological Society (Germany). His work involves mathematical modelling and statistical analysis of large anthropometric datasets, particularly with respect to changing patterns of physical growth and development of children and emergence of obesity across periods of socio-political and economic change. He also made research in issue of human mating preference and biological markers of social behavior. He published more than 90 articles, mostly in renowned journals and 21 chapters in books. He is an Associate Editor of the Anthropological Review. He was awarded by international research fellowship by Royal Society of London and British Council (UK), National Founds for Scientific Research (Belgium) and Indian National Academy of Sciences. This book outlays the possible influence of some important aspects of human migration and social mobility on the biological characters of human populations, including their health and well-being. It contains ten contributions from different researchers working in this area of research. The first chapter, written by Budnik and Henneberg, demonstrates the effect of social class and mobility on morphological characters of body size like height and body mass index (BMI) in a historical population of Poland. In Chapter Two, Chakraborty et al. shows that the migration of disadvantaged people to an adverse environment in an early period of growth and development may increase health risk in adulthood compared to those after completion of major physical growth period, or even compared to those who are born into that adverse environment. Chapter Three (by J. R. Ghosh) reveals the influence of educational and occupational positions on clinical hypertension among adult males from the eastern part of India. In the fourth chapter of this volume, S. Ghosh et al. attempts to find out the relationship between the socio-economic status of family and growth on height and weight demographics in school children aged 5-12 from Kolkata, India. Godina et al. in Chapter Five delineates the differences in various anthropometrical measurements in children and adolescents aged 7 to 17 years across different types of schools, representing different social strata in Moscow. Chapter Six by Kaczmarek discusses the implications of rural to urban migration and its impact on women's health status in Poland. The next chapter by Krzyzanowska* and C. G. Nicholas Mascie-Taylor discusses the impact of regional migration and social mobility on variation in adult height, weight and Body Mass Index, which is evidenced from a British cohort study. In Chapter Eight, Gomula and Koziel highlight from a study in Poland the effect of social mobility of fathers on maturity, measured by the age at menarche in their daughters. In the next chapter, Missoni and Sarac review dietary and lifestyle characteristics in the Eastern Adriatic Islands of Croatia in the backdrop of recent economic transition, urbanisation and migration. The tenth chapter contributed by Singh and Kirchengast compares demographic health related characteristics and reproductive behaviours between Punjabi women residing in Punjab and in Vienna, Austria. This book will be useful for researchers dealing with biological implications of human mobility. It may be of particular interest to human biologists, biological anthropologists, epidemiologists, demographers, economists and other researchers dealing with biological implications of human mobility.Target Audience:Postgraduate students and academic researchers in the fields of biological anthropology, human biology, epidemiology, economists, demographers and allied health professionals.