In the early 1980s, Iraq was a middle-income and rapidly developing country with a well-developed health system. A few decades later - after wars, sanctions and a violent sectarian upsurge - child and maternal health indicators have deteriorated, its poverty headcount index is at 22.9% and diseases such as cholera have remerged. Today Iraq is beset by chronic political deadlock and a complexity of economic challenges; accordingly, all aspects of life are suffering, including health. Irrespective of the monumental investment to improve components of the health system, via national and international efforts, the health status of the population can only advance through resounding and synergistic effort in other aspects of life affecting health: the social determinants of health.

Background The incidence of child labour, especially across developing nations, is of global concern. The use of children in employment in developing economies constitutes a major threat to the societies, and concerted efforts are made by the relevant stakeholders towards addressing some of the factors and issues responsible. Significant risk factors include socio-demographic and economic factors such as poverty, neglect, lack of adequate care, exposure of children to various grades of violence, parental education status, gender, place of residence, household size, residence type or size, wealth index, parental survivorship and household size. Egypt is the largest country in Africa by population. Although UNCIF 2017 reported that the worst forms of child labour in Egypt are concentrated in domestic work, forced begging and commercial sexual exploitation, the situation has received little attention. There are still very few studies initiated specifically to look at child labour in domestic service in Egypt and those that exist have been limited in the scope of their methodology. Geographical coverage and research for child labour in Egypt is also limited, as are accurate statistics and data. There was, therefore, a strong case for looking again at the domestic child labour phenomenon in Egypt, especially after the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) released the first data about child labour in Egypt in 2014. This study builds on the few findings of earlier work, and broadens coverage by including advanced methods and geographical effects of this problem. Objectives This study focuses on identifying socio-demographic, economic and geospatial factors associated with child labour participation. Methods We used the 2014 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) from the Ministry of Health and Population in Egypt, with the record of 20,560 never-married children aged 5–17 years engaging in economic activities, in and out of their home. The data focused on demographic and socio-economic characteristics of household members. Multivariate Bayesian geo-additive models were employed to examine the demographical and socio-economic factors for children working less than 16 hrs; between 16 and less 45 hrs; and over 45 hrs weekly. Results The results showed that at least 31.6% of the children in the age group from 5–10 were working, 68.5% of children aged 11–17 years were engaged in child labour for a wage, and 44.7% of the children in the age group from 5–10 were engaged in hazardous work. From the multivariate Bayesian geo-additive models, female children (with male children as reference category) working at least 16 hrs (OR: 1.3; with 95% CI: 1.2–1.5) were more likely to be engaged in child labour than girls working 16 to 45 hrs (OR: 1; 95% CI: 0.3–1.5). Children born to women without formal education, in non-hazardous jobs, irrespective of the hours spent at work, were more likely to be involved in child labour (52.9%, 56....

This paper examines presence of some stylized facts of short-term stock prices in the banking sector of the Nigerian Stock Market (NSM). Non-normality, lack of autocorrelation in the returns at first lag and significant positive autocorrelation in higher magnitude returns, widely studied in other markets, are investigated using daily closing stock prices of the four major Nigerian banks (Access, First, Guaranty Trust and United Bank for Africa (UBA)), from 2001 to 2013; encompassing periods of different financial scenarios. Jarque-Bera (JB), Doonik-Hansen, Kolmogrov-Smirnov and Ljung-Box (Q) test statistics are applied. Our findings reveal that the four banks stocks behave slightly different, but generally possess the stylized facts found in other markets. Observed is that, while the distributions of the returns for two of these banks (First and UBA) are approximately symmetric and leptokurtic; those of Access and Guaranty Trust banks are significantly non-symmetric and leptokurtic, thus non-normally distributed. Also established is that, while autocorrelation functions of daily returns are either negative or zero, those of both absolute returns and the squared returns are mostly positive. The autocorrelations of absolute returns are found to be predominantly positive and more persistent than those of the squared returns; indicating volatility clustering. Consequently, we conclude that the short-term stock prices of these banks behave like those of other markets. Some implications of the results for financial investment and stock market behaviour in the banking sector of NSM are discussed.

This work is geared towards detecting and solving the problem of multicolinearity in regression analysis. As such, Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) and the Condition Index (CI) were used as measures of such detection. Ridge Regression (RR) and the Principal Component Regression (PCR) were the two other approaches used in modeling apart from the conventional simple linear regression. For the purpose of comparing the two methods, simulated data were used. Our task is to ascertain the effectiveness of each of the methods based on their respective mean square errors. From the result, we found that Ridge Regression (RR) method is better than principal component regression when multicollinearity exists among the predictors.

Objective: The objectives of this study are: 1.) To calculate the probability of Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) events by applying three different equations, which are: the Asia-Pacific Cohort Study (APCS) equation, the Framingham-Asia equation and the original Framingham equation, to the individual risk factors data from the NHESIV, Thailand. 2) To estimate the number of 8-10 years CVD events. 3) To validate and identify the most suitable CVD risk equations for the Thai population. The individual risk factors from the NHESIV dataset was entered into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as the baseline population.Methods: Asia-Pacific Collaborative Cohort Study (APCCS) equations, the Framingham-Asia equation and the original Framingham equation, are applied to calculate the probability of 8 to 10 years CVD events by age groups and gender. The CVD events in this analysis refer to all fatal and non-fatal CVD events (ICD10, I00-I99), which include Ischemic heart disease (IHD) (ICD10, I20-I25) and stroke (ICD10, I60-I69). Results:The 4th National Health Examination Survey IV 2009 (NHESIV) dataset has been entered into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet as the baseline population. APCCS, the Framingham-Asia and the original Framingham equations, were applied to the NHESIV dataset. The APCCS equation calculated the average 8-years probability of getting CVD as 8.3% in men and 7.8% in women. The 8-year likelihood of CVD in the Framingham-Asia equation was 7.2% in men and 8.1% in women. The original Framingham equation showed the highest probability of 10-years CVD which were 18.8% in men and 11.1% in women. Conclusions:The original Framingham equation overestimated the risk of CVD in the Thai population in all age groups. The Asia-Pacific Cohort Study (APCCS) and the Framingham-Asia equations, both performed better estimation than the original Framingham equation in both men and women.