Q1 – Infant Mortality
The file infant.xls contains World Bank data on country-level infant mortality rates across the developed and developing world. The data set contains 394 observations over a 25-year period (from 1990-2014) and includes a number of potential covariates that might plausibly affect health outcomes. The variables are defined as follows:
Infant Mortality – The number of deaths per 1000 live births.
GDP – The real GDP per capita (in US dollars) for each country.
Year – The year the observation was recorded.
Contraceptive Prevalence – The proportion of individuals with access to contraceptives.
Physicians – The number of doctors per 1000 people.
Sanitation – The proportion of individuals with access to modern sanitation facilities.
Education – A measure of educational attainment in terms of years of post-primary attendance.
Your task is to produce an econometric model that will yield useful information for understanding the factors that drive infant mortality. The idea is ultimately to inform policies that could alleviate problems associated with infant mortality in developing countries. You should analyse the data and produce a small report providing expert advice based upon your results.
When interpreting your model you should also consider at least some of the following:
(1) The quality of the fit
(2) The sign and significance of the coefficients
(3) Whether the specification of your model is appropriate for the data
(4) What the model ultimately implies about infant mortality rates, and what can be done about them.
