On Studying Spatial Patterns and Association Between these Patterns of Mortality and Prosperity in Malaysia

Abstract

In this study, we examined the geographical distribution (the spatial structure) of mortality and prosperity in Malaysia. In addition we proposed an approach to investigate the association between clustering patterns of mortality and prosperity across different areas of the country. To characterize the geographic pattern of mortality and prosperity, three indicators (infant, neonatal, and stillbirth) were proposed for mortality and also three indicators (class1, class2 and class3) for occupation were proposed for prosperity. These indicators measure the level of mortality and prosperity factors for all 81 districts in peninsula Malaysia based on 1993 census data. Two statistics of spatial autocorrelation based on sharing boundary neighbours known as global and local Moran are used to investigate the global and local clustering respectively. We found that both mortality and prosperity varied significantly across the different districts. Also, we found many significant local clusters in both mortality (in the north, south and mid-west), and in prosperity (in the north and west). A significant association was found between mortality and prosperity based on the spatial correlation coefficient.