The Relationship between Health and Household Economic Status Using Spatial Measures in Iraq, 2004

This study addresses spatial effects by applying spatial analysis in studying whether household economic status (HES) is related to health across governorates in Iraq. The aim is to assess variation in health and whether this variation is accounted for by variation in HES. A spatial univariate and bivariate autocorrelation measures were applied to cross-sectional data from census conducted in 2004. The hypothesis of spatial clustering for HES was confirmed by a positive global Moran’s I of 0.28 with P=  0.010, while for health was not confirmed by a negative global Moran’s I of −0.03. Based on local Moran’s Ii, two and seven significant clusters in health and in HES were found respectively. Bivariate spatial correlation between health and HES wasn’t found significant (Ixy=-0.08) with P=0.80. In conclusion, geographical variation was found in each of health and HES. Based on visual inspection, the patterns formed by governorates with lowest health and those with lowest HES were partly identical. However, this study cannot support the hypothesis that variation in HES may spatially explain variation in health. Further research is needed to understand mechanisms underlying the influence of neighbourhood context