2025-08-21
Muhammad Butt, Arsh Asim, Hashim Shahbaz, Muhammad Irfan Malik
According to UNICEF, one in four children under the age of five has had their birth unregistered worldwide, exposing them to the risks of statelessness, abuse, and discrimination. Despite the integrated global efforts, South Asia, particularly Pakistan, faces significant provincial disparities in birth registration. This study examines cross-sectional data from the 2017-2018 Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) on a sample of 8,638 children under age five. Only 42.54% of these children have their births officially registered. Using Fairlie decomposition as the core method of analysis, our study aims to investigate whether birth registration inequalities in Punjab-Sindh, Punjab-KPK, and Punjab-Balochistan groups stem primarily from compositional or behavioural differences. Additionally, it bifurcates the relative contribution of individual factors driving the observed disparities across all three inter-provincial groups. Fairlie decomposition results reveal that the differences in household characteristics are the primary driver that explains birth registration disparity in the Punjab-Sindh group. Wealth status and mother’s education contribute 95.23% to the explained inequality. In contrast, the birth registration gap is mainly attributable to the differences in behavioural profiles in the Punjab-KPK group. Equalizing all selected characteristics would only eliminate 46.31% of the birth registration gap. On the other hand, all inequality in the Punjab-Balochistan group entirely results from differences in compositional factors. Here, variations in birth registration behaviour play no role in determining the observed disparity, distinguishing it from the previous two groups. Addressing provincial birth registration disparities requires situation-specific interventions to promote equitable birth registration and achieve the SDG target of 16.9 by 2030.
2025-08-21
Shironica P. Karunanayaka
In contemporary Social Science, the concepts of recognition and representation are not merely theoretical concerns, but fundamental to understanding how social realities are constructed, experienced, and challenged among communities. Social reality refers to shared perceptions, beliefs, values, and social constructs that shape how people understand and interact within a society through ongoing social interactions and cultural transmission (Kaldis, 2014). While this reality is not fixed or purely objective, it is actively created and maintained by individuals and groups who interpret and reinforce social roles and behaviors. The concept of the ‘social construction of reality’ developed by Berger and Luckmann (1966), remains a foundational framework for understanding how societies produce and maintain shared meanings. According to this theory, social reality emerges through habitualization , where repeated behaviors become routine, and institutionalization , where these routines are perceived as objective and taken for granted. This view emphasizes that what we consider ‘real’ is not fixed or universal but shaped by cultural context and social interaction (Kaldis, 2014; Miller & Nowacek, 2018).
2025-08-21
B. M. M. T. Bandaranayake, R. A. Ranga Prabodanie
Crime is an inevitable but manageable aspect of any society. We analysed the age profiles of the suspects and victims of various crimes using a sample of crime records obtained from a regional police station in Sri Lanka. Graphical analysis methods and chi-square tests were used to identify the differences among age groups and different types of crime. For widely reported crimes including housebreaking, theft, robbery, and personal assault, delinquency peaks in 20s and smoothly declines with age. People in their 40s are the most vulnerable to property crimes such as housebreaking and theft. These differences may be explained by the age-related differences in income and unemployment. The suspects of well thought out crimes, such as cheating and breach of trust were the most matured with a peak in 30s-40s. The number of suspects below 20 were significantly low for all types of crimes other than those related to rape and sexual abuse. A strictly adolescent peak of delinquency was observed in 16-19 for crimes associated with abduction, rape and/or sexual abuse and the majority of the victims were children. A child victim or suspect was reported in 10% of all incidents. Involvement in criminal grouping was most prevalent between late teens and 40 years of age. The composite age profile of the suspects complies with the traditional age-crime profile with a minor shift. However, it shows a significant deviation from the age profiles of both convicted and unconvicted prisoners in Sri Lanka, which could be a reflection of delays in arresting and court hearings.