Although the sociodemographic and economic contributors to under-five mortality are well established, very little research has been done to assess the levels of disadvantage under-five children in Nigeria face along these dimensions.Nigeria has the second-highest under-five mortality rate (U5MR) in the world (111 deaths per 1000 live births) and contributed to the highest number of annual under-five deaths globally in 2020 (844,321 deaths).The country has also implemented several decades of policy interventions to reduce under-five mortality by improving sociodemographic and economic conditions at the household level.In this paper, we assess the sociodemographic and economic disadvantages that households with children under-five face compared to other households and discuss the implications for health policy.Using the Nigeria Living Standard Survey 2018-19, we conducted a bivariate analysis to compare the sociodemographic Beginner / Beginner+ and economic characteristics of households with and without under-five children.
We performed independent samples t-test and proportions test to assess whether these sociodemographic and economic factors were significantly different for both groups.We found that households with under-five children typically had larger sizes (6.6 vs.3.6), lower mean adult age (36.
5 vs.45.3), and male household heads (91.3% vs.71.
5%) than households without under-five children.Furthermore, households with under-five children were less likely to have access to improved drinking water (77.2% vs.86.0%) and sanitation sources (54.
0% vs.61.9%) than those without under-five children.Despite having more adult working members, 71.2% of households with under-five children lived below the poverty line compared to 37.
7% of other households.Although their total consumption expenditure was lower than households without under-five children, they spent a higher proportion of their expenditure on health care and were at a higher risk of experiencing catastrophic health expenditure.Our Stabilizers study has shown that households with children under five are disproportionately disadvantaged than other households in Nigeria.The households with under-five children are larger, younger, and poorer than those without children.We also show a wide variation in the proportion of households with children under five by state.
Any efforts to reduce under-five mortality and morbidity in Nigeria should recognize these sociodemographic and economic differences.