Effect of birth interval and wealth on under-5 child mortality in Nigeria

Abstract

BackgroundThere exists a number of studies on the causes and determinants of childhood mortality in the developing world. However, to best of our knowledge, none of the existing studies have examined the effect of wealth and birth interval on childhood mortality in Nigeria. This study is an attempt to fill that gap. MethodsData for this study comes from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey 2013, which is a nationally representative cross-sectional survey. This study uses information on 119,386 under-5 children to analyze the effect of wealth and birth interval on childhood mortality. Bi-variate and Cox regression technique were applied for analyzing the cross-sectional data drawn from representative survey. ResultsUnder-5 mortality was higher in mothers who were poor, illiterate and working either as a professional/technical worker or as an agricultural worker. Children whose mothers were illiterate and had less than two years of the birth interval had the highest under-5 mortality. Younger mothers (aged less than 20 years) lost more children. Under-5 deaths were more among those mothers who were poor and had less than two years of birth interval. The child mortality was significantly high in poor households with low birth interval. ConclusionUnder-5 mortality is low among those who had higher wealth status and more than two years of birth interval. In order to reduce or eradicating the effect of birth interval and wealth effect, there is burning need to control the economic inequality and birth interval.