This study addresses spatial effects by applying spatial analysis in studying whether household economic status (HES) is related to health across governorates in Iraq. The aim is to assess variation in health and whether this variation is accounted for by variation in HES. A spatial univariate and bivariate autocorrelation measures were applied to cross-sectional data from census conducted in 2004. The hypothesis of spatial clustering for HES was confirmed by a positive global Moran’s of 0.28 with , while for health was not confirmed by a negative global Moran’s of ？0.03. Based on local Moran’s , two and seven significant clusters in health and in HES were found respectively. Bivariate spatial correlation between health and HES wasn’t found significant ( ) with . In conclusion, geographical variation was found in each of health and HES. Based on visual inspection, the patterns formed by governorates with lowest health and those with lowest HES were partly identical. However, this study cannot support the hypothesis that variation in HES may spatially explain variation in health. Further research is needed to understand mechanisms underlying the influence of neighbourhood context. 1. Introduction The economic status hypothesis proposes that HES in a community or population influences health because unfavorable comparisons lead to families with a lower position to experience negative emotions that cause stress and detrimentally impact health, and well-being, and individuals with different statuses are less likely to develop trust and cohesion with one another. These processes are important for individual and family health, and also because their results may detract from community level social resources. Research on neighborhoods and health is motivated by the idea that we live in places that represent more than physical locations. They are also the manifestation of the social, cultural, political, and geographic cleavages that shape a constellation of risks and resources. Research on neighborhood effects has reconnected public health with its earlier population foundations, showing that the social ecology and built environments are important “upstream” determinants of chronic and infectious disease. The HES is most influenced and is more expressive of the deterioration of Iraq’s economic conditions throughout the cities and rural areas and was heavily affected by the new developments during the year of survey and the years before. AL-Rubiay and AL-Rubaiy [1] studied the distribution of skin diseases in Basrah governorate, southern area in Iraq. They found
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