ON A STUDY OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EDUCATION AND MORTALITY USING FULLY AND PARTIALLY LATENT MODELS

Faisal G. Khamis, Muna F. Hanoon and Saad G. Yaseen

Received September 5, 2009

Abstract

Several studies have been carried out to examine the association between babies’ mortality and education. These studies are useful for the purpose of intervention and policy making. In this study, we examined the relationship between babies’ mortality factor which includes three indicators: standardized (infant, neonatal and stillbirth) mortality ratios and education factor which includes also three indicators: the percentages of population who achieved (primary, secondary and tertiary) education by using fully and partially latent models. The data are collected from the information of 81 districts based on the census made in Malaysia in 1995. We examined the goodness-of-fit indexes for assumed models. We concluded generally that improvements in the levels of education may automatically lead to decreasing in babies’ mortality based on partially latent model. This study is composed for a number of path diagrams to create a picture of babies’ health in Malaysia.

Keywords and phrases: infant, neonatal, stillbirth, mortality, education, LISREL, MIMIC models.