Modeling and Forecasting Under-Five Mortality Rate in Nigeria using Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average Approach

Donalben Onome Eke,Friday Ewere

doi:10.34198/ejms.4220.347360

Donalben Onome Eke, Friday Ewere

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.34198/ejms.4220.347360

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Abstract

Nigeria’s efforts aimed at reducing avoidable child deaths have been met with gradual and sustained progress. Despite the decline in childhood mortality in Nigeria in the last two decades, its prevalence still remain high in comparison to the global standard of mortality for children under the age of five which stands at 25 deaths per 1000 live births. Knowledge of the chances of Nigeria achieving this goal for childhood mortality will aid proper interventions needed to reduce the occurrence. Therefore, this paper employed the Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model for time series analysis to make forecast of under-five mortality in Nigeria up to 2030 using data obtained from the United Nation’s Inter Agency Group for Childhood Mortality Estimate (UN-IGME). The ARIMA (2, 1, 1) model predicted a reduction of up to 37.3% by 2030 at 95% confidence interval. Results from the study also showed that a reduction of over 300% in under-five mortality is required for Nigeria to be able to achieve the SDG goal for under-five mortality.

Highlights

Under-five mortality rate defined as the probability of a child who survives to age one dying between age one and five in a given year for a particular geographical location [13], [8] has long been identified as a barometer for the measurement of a country’s state of health and health care facilities as well as one of the fundamental tools for the evaluation of a country’s level of social economic development
The Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) (2, 1, 1) model predicted a reduction of up to 37.3% by 2030 at 95%
Relevant stake holders in public health and government moved to curb its rate of occurrence by adopting a systematic approach to reducing under-five deaths by two thirds between 1990 and as contained in the fourth tenet of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 4

Summary

Introduction

Under-five mortality rate defined as the probability of a child who survives to age one dying between age one and five in a given year for a particular geographical location [13], [8] has long been identified as a barometer for the measurement of a country’s state of health and health care facilities as well as one of the fundamental tools for the evaluation of a country’s level of social economic development. It is an Received: May 19, 2020; Accepted: June 15, 2020. Whilst there was a steady reduction in under five deaths in Nigeria between 1990 and 2015, mortality still remained relatively and unacceptably high [4], [2] leading to Nigeria’s inability to attain the MDG 4 target

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