Correlates Of Early Childhood Health In Ethiopia Application Of Structural Equation Modeling With Latent Variables

Child health stat liS is an important determinant of adult productivities and earnings; thusrnit represents an important channel of intergenerational socioeconomic mobility. It is alsornrecognized that health is a variable inherently unobservable and if observed has manyrnmeasurement errors. This thesis used the special case of structural equation lIIodels with latentrnvariables known as the Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes (MIMIC) to investigate therndeterminants of child health and avoid the problem of health unobservability by using threernindicators. The source of the data is the Young Lives Project 's household survey. The novelty ofrnthe empirical analysis is the simultaneous estimation of equations for both permanent andrntransitory health using cross-sectional designs. The results of this paper show that parentalrneducation, household size, safe drinking water source of the household, household overallrneconomic status and vaccination availability are among the important determinants of bothrnpermanent and transitOfY child health. The study also showed that Ihere is strong correlationrnbetween transilolY and permanent child heallh in that a good permanent health state determinesrnthe transitory health state significantly. The study finally concluded that any policy measurerntOlVards improving the health status of children has to take in to account the above mentionedrnfactors as target variables.

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