Correlates of Early Childhood Health in Ethiopia: Application of Structural Equation Modeling with Latent Variables
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Date
2009-07
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A.A.U
Abstract
Child health stat liS is an important determinant of adult productivities and earnings; thus
it represents an important channel of intergenerational socioeconomic mobility. It is also
recognized that health is a variable inherently unobservable and if observed has many
measurement errors. This thesis used the special case of structural equation lIIodels with latent
variables known as the Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes (MIMIC) to investigate the
determinants of child health and avoid the problem of health unobservability by using three
indicators. The source of the data is the Young Lives Project 's household survey. The novelty of
the empirical analysis is the simultaneous estimation of equations for both permanent and
transitory health using cross-sectional designs. The results of this paper show that parental
education, household size, safe drinking water source of the household, household overall
economic status and vaccination availability are among the important determinants of both
permanent and transitOfY child health. The study also showed that Ihere is strong correlation
between transilolY and permanent child heallh in that a good permanent health state determines
the transitory health state significantly. The study finally concluded that any policy measure
tOlVards improving the health status of children has to take in to account the above mentioned
factors as target variables.
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Keywords
Early Childhood Health, Latent Variables