In this thesis, we were aiming at investigating the small area estimates
of the malnutrition indicators. For this, we first studied the
small area estimation technique using Elbers, Lanjouw and Lanjouw
(ELL) method. This approach is used in the case of lack of precision
and accuracy of direct estimates at a sub-population level. The subpopulation
level meant here can be a geographical region or a demographical
domain. To solve this problem, we introduce other variables
called covariates to borrow strength in other related (mainly neighboring)
domains or past researches in the same domain. Such variables
must be such that they usually are in correlation with the variable
of interest. In our study, we considered the districts to be the small
areas. The malnutrition indicators which were our interest are: Stunting
also called height-for-age, Underweight also called weight-for-age
and Wasting also called weight-for-height. The covariates used to explain
the rates of those indicators are: poverty rate, illiteracy rate and
urbanization rate. These three covariates were chosen because they
were found to be of great impact on nutritional status as published in
the report of National Institute of Statistics Of Rwanda (NISR) of the
2010 Demographic and Health Survey. Some information was obtained
from the third integrated household living conditions (EICV3) report.
Stunting which is the indicator of chronic malnutrition was found to be
of the highest proportion compared to other indicators in all districts.
The underweight indicating the malnutrition in the recent period of
time comes at the second place and lastly, the wasting. Apart from
the reduction of malnutrition indicators rates which may have undergone
in general, the same remarks are highlighted. The districts from
Kigali City province are not much suffering from malnutrition followed
by those of the Eastern province. Among six first suffering districts
referring to stunting, there are three of the Western Province, two of
the Southern Province and One of the Northern Province. Those districts
are: Nyamasheke, Rutsiro, Ngororero, Gisagara, Nyaruguru and
Burera. As stunting was at low proportion in Kigali City, the underweight
is also more than two times lower than for all other Provinces.
The wasting proportion is not high in general in the whole country.