The Factors Affecting Maternal Mortality in Java: Spatial Modeling Application on Demographic Data

Abstract

Maternal deaths are considered very serious issue worldwide, according to World Health Organization (WHO) everyday approximately 830 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. According to Indonesia’s health profile in 2014, West Java, Central Java and East Java provinces contributed 26 percent of the total number of maternal deaths in Indonesia. The objective of this study is to model maternal deaths in West Java, Central Java, and East Java using Spatial Autoregressive Model (SAM) and Spatial Error Model (SEM), inspect the factors affecting maternal deaths, and compare the models. The results showed that number of health personnel, the number of residents received Raskin (BerasMiskin), and number of illiterate residents were significant factors that affect maternal deaths. Based on the result of the Moran’s I test, spatial autocorrelation in the residual of linear regression model, and the response variable (maternal deaths) are significant. The likelihood ratio test showed that the spatial regression models were better than multiple linear regression model in predicting the maternal deaths. The AIC value of the OLS model is 243.1, SAM is 240.3, and SEM is 234.4. Based on the AIC values, SEM is better than the SAM in predicting maternal deaths.