A Spatial Analysis of Child Malnutrition and Social-Environmental Factors in Sub-Saharan Africa

This study will use a geographic information system (GIS) to develop a database comprising information about child malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa, southern Africa, and Malawi. This study intends to understand whether there are geographic concentrations of child malnutrition in different geographical scales in Africa and analyze whether social environmental factors and health services factors will lead to child malnutrition. The data come from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). The sample size is 45 countries in the geographical level of sub-Saharan region. In the geographical level of southern Africa, the sample size is 100 districts. In Malawi level, the sample size is 849 enumeration Areas. This study will aggregate data from the 2010-2011 DHS to different geographic levels to measure the variables of interest. Data will be geocoded based on latitude and longitude to develop the geographic information system. The outcome variables include standardized height for age, weight for age, and weight for height. Ten independent variables include sociodemographic characteristics, health services utilization, environmental factors, and health conditions. This study will use Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) to examine the geographic concentrations of child malnutrition and use spatial regression analyses to examine whether geographic concentrations of child malnutrition still exist after considering social-environmental factors. In other words, this study intends to investigate whether the geographic concentrations of child malnutrition were the spillover effects of surrounding areas. All of the analyses will be conducted by the three geographic scales (e.g.sub-Saharan Africa, southern Africa, Malawi).