Joint modelling of child poverty and malnutrition in children aged 6 to 59 months in Malawi.
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Date
2019
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Abstract
The objective of this study was to identify risk factors associated with poverty and
malnutrition of children among the ages 6-to-59 months in the country of Malawi,
making use of the joint model. By joint modelling, we refer to simultaneously
analysing two or more response variables emanating from the same individual. Using
the 2015/2016 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey, we jointly examine the
relationship that exists between poverty and malnutrition of children among 6-to-59
months in Malawi. Jointly modelling these two outcome variables is appropriate
since it is expected that people that live under poverty would have a poor nutrition
system, and if a child is malnourished, the likelihood that they come from a poor
family is greatly enhanced. Jointly modelling correlated outcomes can improve the
efficiency of parameter estimates compared to fitting separate models for each outcome,
as joint models have better control over type I error rates in multiple tests.
A generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) was adopted and a Bayesian approach
was used for parameter estimation. The potential risk factors considered in this
study comprised of the childs age in months, gender of child, birth weight, birth order,
mothers education level, head of household sex, language, household smoking
habit, anaemic level, type of residence (urban or rural), region, toilet facility, source
of drinking water, and multiple births. Each response was modelled separately as
well as jointly and the results compared. The R package MCMCglmm was used in
the analyses. The joint model revealed a positive association between malnutrition
of children and poverty in the household.
Description
Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.