The Household-Based Socio-Economic Index for Every District in Peninsular Malaysia

Authors: Nuzlinda Abdul Rahman, Syerrina Zakaria

Abstract:

Deprivation indices are widely used in public health study. These indices are also referred as the index of inequalities or disadvantage. Even though, there are many indices that have been built before, it is believed to be less appropriate to use the existing indices to be applied in other countries or areas which had different socio-economic conditions and different geographical characteristics. The objective of this study is to construct the index based on the geographical and socio-economic factors in Peninsular Malaysia which is defined as the weighted household-based deprivation index. This study has employed the variables based on household items, household facilities, school attendance and education level obtained from Malaysia 2000 census report. The factor analysis is used to extract the latent variables from indicators, or reducing the observable variable into smaller amount of components or factor. Based on the factor analysis, two extracted factors were selected, known as Basic Household Amenities and Middle-Class Household Item factor. It is observed that the district with a lower index values are located in the less developed states like Kelantan, Terengganu and Kedah. Meanwhile, the areas with high index values are located in developed states such as Pulau Pinang, W.P. Kuala Lumpur and Selangor.

Keywords: Factor Analysis, Basic Household Amenities, Middle-Class Household Item, Socio-economic Index

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1058225

References:

[1] A. Testi, E. Ivaldi, and A. Busi, An Index of Material Deprivation for Geographical Areas. Working Paper No. 23, 2004, Giugno University: Department of Economics.
[2] A. Niggebrugge, R. Haynes, A. Jones, A. Lovett, and I. Harvey, The Index of Multiple Deprivation 2000 Access Domain: A Useful Indicator for Public Health?. Social Science & Medicine, vol. 60, pp. 2743-2753, Jan. 2005.
[3] O. Morgan and A. Baker, Measuring Deprivation in England and Wales using 2001 Carstairs Scores. Health Statistics Quarterly 31, Autumn 2006, Office for National Statistics.
[4] M. Shaw, H. Tunstall, and D. Dorling, Increasing Inequalities in Risk of Murder in Britain: Trends in the Demographic and Spatial Distribution of Murder, 1981-2000. Health & Place, vol. 11, pp. 45-54, 2005.
[5] Y. A. Sanusi, Application of Human Development Index to Measurement of Deprivation Among Urban Households in Minna, Nigeria, Habitat International, vol. 32, pp. 384-398, 2008.
[6] J. B. Holt, and C.P. Lo, The Geography of Mortality in the Atlanta Metropolitan. Computer, Environment & Urban System, vol. 32, pp. 149-164, 2008.
[7] G. Rey, E. Jougla, A. Fouillet and D. Hémon, Ecological Association Between a Deprivation Index and Mortality in France over the Period 1997 - 2001: Variations with Spatial Scale, Degree of Urbanicity, Age, Gender and Cause of Death. BMC Public Health, vol. 9, no. 33, Jan 2009, doi : 10.1186/1471-2458-9-33.
[8] Department of Statistics Malaysia. Taburan Penduduk dan Ciri-ciri Asas Demografi: Banci Penduduk dan Perumahan Malaysia, 2000.
[9] Department of Statistics Malaysia. Laporan Am Banci Penduduk dan Perumahan: Banci Penduduk dan Perumahan Malaysia, 2000.
[10] J.W. Grice, Computing and Evaluation Factor Scores. Psychological Methods, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 430-450, 2001.