Relationship between Socioeconomic, Education, and Health Indices of Countries in the World

Abstract

The purposes of this study are making clear factors that influence health status of nations, and highlighting the importance of education role and distribution in health services that is believed just as important as income growth on improving health status . Data from World Bank and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Report of 125 countries available were untilized in the analysis . To observe the relationship, the indices of the world data were plotted with Y-axis of infant mortality rates (IMR) and life expectancy, against X-axis of gross national produce (GNP) per capita, total illiteracy rate, government expenditure on health and education per capita, household's consumption on medical care and education, and population with access to health services. The indices were analyzed by factor analysis, which found that there were two underlying factors that influence nation's health status: economic factor (GNP, government expenditure, and household expenditure), and social factor (total illiteracy rate and accessibility to health care). In visualizing the link between variables, dendogram using Ward's method of hierarchical cluster anlaysis (excluding high-income economy countries) was applied, with values standardized. It was concluded that countries which had parallel development betweeneconomic growth and social growth had better health status . Thus, the problem faced by nations is how to combine economic growth in such a way which is parallel with the growth in education and distribution of health services .