Household Socio-Economic Status on Maternal Health Status at the Time of Childbirth in North Central Timor

Abstract

The number of maternal mortality during childbirth is influenced by education, occupation, income, number of children, and the frequency of prenatal visits. The relationship between these variables can be directly or indirectly related to the health of the mother during childbirth. The prenatal visit frequency can act as an intermediate variable that links other variables to the mother’s health status during childbirth. This study aims to; 1) determine the direct and indirect relationship between variables, 2) determine the effective contribution of each independent variable to the mother’s health during childbirth. The data for this study came from 251 mothers who had given birth. The path analysis from the complete model shows that partial income has a negative but Sign (0.000) relationship with the mother's health condition, whereas other variables do not. However, simultaneously the five variables have a Sign (0.000) relationship with the mother’s health during the delivery. The complete model suggested an R-Square value of 0.152. The largest effective contribution to maternal health status comes from income with 13%, following the frequency of prenatal visit: 1.0%, the lowest contribution comes from husband’s education: 0.1%.