Gebrenegus Ghilagaber: Joint Modelling of Interdependent Life Course Events: Illustration with Data from Demographic and Health Surveys

ABSTRACT: Individuals’ life-courses often consist of interrelated transitions and decisions. In this talk, we present relatively recent methods for joint modeling of multiple transitions (or transitions and decisions) that statistically account for the possibility of reciprocal causation among such transitions/decisions. The issues are illustrated by modelling jointly child mortality and utilization of health care based on data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in some African countries. In some of the countries studied it is shown that while utilization of health care reduces mortality risks, such beneficial effect may be underestimated if the models are fitted separately (thereby ignoring adverse selection effects). In others, separate modelling leads to overestimation of the beneficial effects of health care on mortality (by ignoring favorable selection processes). Possible explanations for such differences and the findings' policy implications will be discussed.