Nguyễn Thúy QuỳnhFaculty: International EconomicsKeyword: child mortality, female literacy rate, GDP per capita, total fertility rate, EuropeanOur essay titled: “Factors affecting child
OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC
Variables Definition and Economic Theories related
Child mortality is the mortality of children under the age of five The child mortality rate, also under-five mortality rate, refers to the probability of dying between birth and exactly five years of age expressed per 1,000 live births. Child Mortality calculation: per 1000 per day
GDP per capita is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes (less subsidies) not included in the valuation of output, divided by mid-year population This calculation reflects a nation's standard of living.
GDP per capita Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period As a broad measure of overall domestic production, it functions as a comprehensive scorecard of a given country’s economic health.
C is consumer spending, I is business investment, G is government spending, and (X-M) is net exports.
In this research, we will analyze GDP per capita using real GDP (Real gross domestic product (GDP) is an inflation-adjusted measure that reflects the value of all goods and services produced by an economy in a given year Real GDP is expressed in base-year prices)
The total fertility rate in a specific year is defined as the total number of children that would be born to each woman if she were to live to the end of her child-bearing years and give birth to children in alignment with the prevailing age- specific fertility rates It is calculated by totalling the age-specific fertility rates as defined over five-year intervals (Age-specific fertility rate is the number of live- births born to females of a specific age group, out of every thousand females in the same age group.)
Together with mortality and migration, fertility is an element of population growth, reflecting both the causes and effects of economic and social developments. This indicator is measured in children per woman.
Where TFR is total fertility rate per woman in a specific year and ASFR is age-specific fertility rate per 1000 women in a 5-year increment age group.
The literacy rate is defined by the percentage of the population of a given age group that can read and write The adult literacy rate corresponds to ages 15 and above, the youth literacy rate to ages 15 to 24, and the elderly to ages 65 and above
It is typically measured according to the ability to comprehend a short simple statement on everyday life Generally, literacy also encompasses numeracy, and measurement may incorporate a simple assessment of arithmetic ability The literacy rate and number of literates should be distinguished from functional literacy, a more comprehensive measure of literacy assessed on a continuum in which multiple proficiency levels can be determined.
A high literacy rate (or low illiteracy rate) suggests the existence of an effective primary education system and/or literacy programs that have enabled a
12 large proportion of the population to acquire the ability of using the written word (and making simple arithmetic calculations) in daily life and to continue learning It is common practice to present and analyse literacy rates together with the absolute number of adult illiterates as improvements in literacy rates may sometimes be accompanied by increases in the illiterate population due to a changing demographic structure.
Variable Relationship
Female literacy plays a critical role in the overall growth and development of children It has been proved from research that children who are taken care of by literate mothers get all round development in every aspect of their life There is an inverse relationship between female literacy rate and infant mortality and children mortality rate.
There is a very strong relationship between child mortality and economic development: higher GDP means a lower child mortality.
Lower (or higher) mortality might induce lower (or higher) fertility, but it is well established that higher birth rates lead to higher infant and child mortality.
Related published researches
The research’s methodology is a quantitative research This communication studied the impacts of fertility rates, female participation in the labour force, per capita GNP, female literacy rates, and government expenditure on health as a percentage of GNP on infant mortality rates Results, based on 117 countries for the year 1993, and after adjusting for heteroscedasticity, indicate that with the exception of expenditure on health programmes, all other factors significantly affect infant mortality rates However, the findings contradict Chowdhury’s (1988) theory that there is a dual causality between infant mortality rates and fertility rates, but demonstrate that fertility rates do have an effect on infant mortality rates have the strongest impact on infant mortality rates Hence, these factors should be given prime importance when developing programmes to curb infant mortality.
This research uses quantitative method The research examines the relation between infant mortality rates, gross national product, and income distribution using the World Bank database (38 countries in 1970 and 26 countries in 1990 Its findings support the hypothesis that average measures of population health are influenced by the distribution of income within societies From the results, it can be seen that infant mortality rate was negatively associated with GNP per head, and positively associated with income inequality, both of the relations are highly significant (p < 0,001) When they used 1990 data on the GNP per head and the Gini coefficient to validate the model, predictions for infant mortality rates in 1990 were in close agreement with the true values (r=0.89 with the Gini coefficient data for 26 countries; and r=0.91 with the Gini coefficient data for 94 countries) The findings suggest that in poor countries (GNP per head < US$1000) a substantial reduction in infant mortality rate may be possible by decreasing income inequality or increasing GNP per head In rich countries, reduction of income inequality is likely to be more effective in lowering infant mortality rates than further increases in GNP per head would be.
This paper estimates the determinants of child mortality in the fourteen Sub- Saharan countries for which Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data are available It differs radically from the usual approach of estimating reduced-form equations of child mortality from samples of children by allowing for the possibility that such samples are choice-based, reflecting prior selective fertility decisions.
In 5 of the 14 countries, the estimated selectivity parameter, p, is statistically significant at the 0.05 level or less In three of these five countries the correlation
14 coefficients are positive, indicating negative birth selection, and two of them are positive Negative birth selection means that unmeasured factors associated with higher child mortality are associated with higher fertility - mothers of children more likely to die before the age of 24 months (conditional on the exogenous variables) are more likely to experience a birth in any time period Overall, 9 out of 14 correlation coefficients are positive Among the estimates uncorrected for the selectivity of fertility, mother's schooling reduces the probability of child mortality before age two in every case, and is statistically significant at communion levels of significance for all countries except Tanzania (t= -1.07) Among the selection- corrected estimates, women's schooling is also negatively associated with mortality in every case, and also statistically significant in every case (for Tanzania the t- statistic becomes -4.42).
Hypothesis
Based on existing research and knowledge, all three factors: GDP per capita, female literacy and fertility rate are all known to have an impact on child mortality More specifically, GDP per capita and female literacy are hypothesized to be negatively related to child mortality while high fertility rate will generally increase child mortality rate.
SECTION 2 MODEL SPECIFICATION AND DATA
Methodology
Linear regression is a linear approach for modelling the relationship between a scalar response and one or more explanatory variables (also known as dependent and independent variables) The case of one explanatory variable is called simple linear regression; for more than one, the process is called multiple linear regression (David A Freedman, 2009) In linear regression, the relationships are modeled using linear predictor functions whose unknown model parameters are estimated from the data.
Ordinary least squares (OLS) is a type of linear least squares method for choosing the unknown parameters in a linear regression model (with fixed level-one effects of a linear function of a set of explanatory variables) by the principle of least squares: minimizing the sum of the squares of the differences between the observed dependent variable (values of the variable being observed) in the input dataset and the output of the (linear) function of the independent variable Or in other words, OLS estimator minimizes the sum of all squared residuals i According to the Gauss - Markov theorem, OLS is BLUE, meaning Best Linear Unbiased Estimator.
We have collected data about child mortality, GDP per capita, female literacy rate and fertility rate from credible online sources The collected data will then be analyzed using Stata 16 in order to figure out the magnitude of the effects the independent variables have on child mortality rate.
Theoretical model specification
GDP per capita is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes (less subsidies) not included in the valuation of output
16 divided by mid-year population We calculate it in USD According to the expenditure approach, GDP is calculated using this formula: GDP = C + G + I + NX
C = all private consumption/consumer spending within a country’s economy, including, durable goods (items with a lifespan greater than three years), non-durable goods (food & clothing), and services
G = total government expenditures, including salaries of government employees, road construction/repair, public schools, and military expenditure
I = the sum of a country’s investments spent on capital equipment, inventories, and housing
NX = Net country export – Net country import
In this research, we analyze GDP per capita using real GDP to adjust for inflation and better reflect the economic development of the countries in the study
Fertility rate is the total number of children that would be born by a woman if she lived to the end of her child-bearing years and give birth to children in alignment with the prevailing age-specific fertility rates It is measured in children per woman and indicate population growth, calculated by the following formula:
Where TFR is total fertility rate per woman in a specific year and ASFR is age- specific fertility rate per 1000 women in a 5-year increment age group.
Literacy rate is the percentage of the population of specific age groups that can read and write Measured by simple numeracy and reading/writing ability tests We calculate it as a percentage-based variable, with the following formula:
Child mortality is the mortality of children under the age of 5, it is calculated in the unit of people, with the following formula:
Based on previous research and findings, child mortality depends on 3 factors: Female literacy rate, GDP per capita and fertility rate Thus, we derived the following regression model:
- GDP : GDP per capita (USD)
Independent variables: GDP per capita, Fertility rate, Female literacy rate
While GDP is not generally considered to be the mean, not the end of human development, a high GDP per capita indicates a higher standard of living for the citizens of a country, high GDP allows for each citizen to spend more on education and healthcare, lowering the risk of child mortality Furthermore, it will provide the government with
18 resources needed to improve its people’s quality of life Thus, there is an evident negative relationship between GDP per capita and child mortality.
It is generally agreed by health experts that high fertility rate pose a large threat to mothers and newborns’ health as there is a higher chance of complications among women who give birth too regularly or have too many children Having a lot of infants to take care of also worsen the financial conditions of households, especially poor households with limited access to healthcare and education Therefore, high fertility rate is positively related to child mortality.
A high female literacy rate means newborns are taken care of by mothers with adequate knowledge concerning the development of children and understanding how to deal with infants’ health problems, not to mention its effects on other factors that also impact child mortality It can be inferred that there is a negative relationship between this variable and child mortality.
To clarify the relationship between independent variables and the dependent variable requiring calculation and hypothesis testing using econometrics method.
Data description
There are two main sources that we use to collect and analyze our dataset The Development Data Group of the World Bank organization, guided by professional standards in the collection, compilation and dissemination of data, provides us with quality and reliable sources of information Therefore, we chose to collect data on the World Bank official DataBank website in terms of child mortality, GDP and fertility rate across 47 European countries from 2009-2018.
Another source of information for our research is countryeconomy.com – a website that provided us with information on female literacy rate from those European countries.
Europe is shared by 50 countries, in which we chose to collect 47 countries for
We calculated it in the units of people
The mean value of child mortality is 2293.787, the standard deviation is 4343.208, the minimum value is 0, and the maximum value is 25359.
We calculated it in the unit of current U.S dollar ($)
The mean value of GDP per capita is $27717.91, the standard deviation is
$25654.77, the minimum value is $676.12, and the maximum value is $123678.7
We calculated it in the units of births per woman
The mean value of fertility rate is 1.70974, the standard deviation is 0.443393, the minimum value is 1.08, and the maximum value is 3.623
We calculated in the units of percentage (%)
The mean value of female literacy rate is 98.52276%, the standard deviation is 2.449398%, the minimum value is 61.3%, and the maximum value is 100%
The table below is a conclusion for the descriptive statistics of our sample data:
From the results, we can see that fertility rate is on the closely related side with child mortality with the correlations just above 0.5 Meanwhile, GDP capita and female literacy rate shows a negative and loose linear correlation with their correlations near 0.
ESTIMATED MODEL AND STATISTICAL INFERENCE
Estimated model
We construct a 4-variable regression model based on the aforementioned theories to study impact of GDP per capita, fertility rate, female literacy rate on child mortality by running a regression with child mortality as a dependent variable and the other as independent variables The results generated by STATA are as follow:
GDP per capita 1 -0.0326243 se(1) 0.006658 ts1 -4.9
Female literacy rate 3 -272.4541 se(3) 68.76544 ts3 -3.96
Residual sum of squares (RSS) 2.8368e+09
Explained sum of squares (ESS) 6.0101e+09
Total sum of squares (TSS) 8.8470e+09
The adjusted coefficient of determination (adjusted R 2 ) 0.3163
Root-mean-squared-error (RMSE) 3591.3
From the sample regression model, we can conclude that:
- When GDP per capita increases by $1, fertility rate and female literacy rate stay constant, the mean value of child mortality decreases by 0.0326243 units.
- When fertility rate increases by 1 unit, GDP per capita and female literacy rate stay constant, the mean value of child mortality increases by 4709.341 units.
- When female literacy rate increases by 1%, fertility rate and GDP per capita stay constant, the mean value of child mortality decreases by 272.4541 units.
Hypothesis testing
From the sample regression model generated by results from STATA:
- The coefficient of GDP per capita shows a negative relationship with child mortality -> True with the research hypothesis
- The coefficient of fertility rate shows a positive relationship with child mortality -> True with the research hypothesis
- The coefficient of female literacy rate shows a negative relationship with child mortality -> True with the research hypothesis
Hypothesis: Do all factors jointly explain the variation in child mortality?
According to STATA, p-value = 0.000 < 0.05 => reject
The model is significant at 5% level of significance
Hypothesis: Does GDP per capita have an impact on child mortality?
GDP per capita has an impact on child mortality at 5% significance level
Hypothesis: Does fertility rate have an impact on child mortality?
Fertility rate has an impact on child mortality at 5% significance level
Hypothesis: Does female literacy rate have an impact on child mortality?
Female literacy rate has an impact on child mortality at 5% significance level
Recommendation
These findings have a significant impact on reducing the child mortality rate in Europe To minimize the number of child fatalities, the government ought to exercise three policies
The first policy is to encourage economic development to increase the nation's GDP per capita since the higher the GDP per capita, the lower the number of children dying young
The second policy is restricting the number of children per family If the family has less children, those children will receive better care and better living conditions
The last but most important policy is reducing the literacy rate among females.This has the most impact on reducing child mortality rate because mothers are the direct person to decide the well-being of their offspring and our model also shows that female literacy rate has the largest marginal effect on child mortality rate There are various policies that the government can implement to reduce female literacy rate such as encouraging and supporting all citizens to receive proper education.
This report investigated factors (GDP per capita, fertility rate and female literacy rate) influencing child mortality rate The analysis has been carried out based on economic theories Regression analysis model and Ordinary Least Squares (OSL) are used effectively to prove the theory
With a value of 0.3207 for our regression model, our model can explain 32.07% of 470 samples in the independent variables After analyzing background information, a model was constructed that helps determine some possible influences for child mortality rate Applying the economic theories, it is shown that GDP per capita and female literacy rate have negative relationship with child mortality rate and only fertility rate has positive relationship with the dependent variable The results conducted by our research matches with the content of the economics theories.
In conclusion, GDP per capita and female literacy rate have an adverse effect on child mortality rate and only fertility rate has a positive relationship with child mortality rate.
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