You were asked:
(a) Examine the countries that have zero adult illiteracy. Are the under-five mortality rates for these countries low or high compared with those for the rest of the table?
(b) Now examine the countries that have illiteracy rates that are more than 50%. Are the under-five mortality rates for these countries generally low or high compared with those for the rest of the table?
(c) From your answers to these questions, would you say there is a link between adult illiteracy and under-five mortality rate? If so, what is it?

Activity eight should have suggested to you that the countries with high illiteracy have high under-five mortality rates and vice versa. Illiteracy rate is often taken as a measure of education level in a country (high illiteracy being equivalent to a low education level). So we can therefore draw a link between low education level and high incidence of disease. This link between education and disease has, in fact, been made many times. For example, the World Bank has reported on 'the extremely powerful role of literacy in determining a population's level of mortality'. It suggests that this single factor carries more weight than any other.

Now, try section five, which will consider the links between disease and poverty.

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