IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/agd/wpaper/20-048.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Account of Disproportionate Child Healthcare Utilization in Nigeria

Author

Listed:
  • Godfrey I. Ihedimma

    (Spiritan University, Nneochi, Abia State, Nigeria)

  • Godwin I. Opara

    (Imo State University, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria)

Abstract

Adults are capable of self-assessment of their health status and are at the rudimentary level, able to determine if they need to consume more of health services or not. This however, lacks in children below the age of 5 years and as such, they rely on their parents and or guardians for healthcare utilization. The study acknowledges the mismatch between utilization and prevalence of illness across the country and the attendant inequality in healthcare utilization across regions. The study adopts the NDHS 2013, the Grossman Framework on the demand for health and the Logistic Regression Analysis and found that higher maternal educational levels increase child healthcare utilization. Other factors include increased wealth, frequency of older mothers, vaccination and exclusive breastfeeding. Frequency of older children and larger household sizes were however found to reduce the probability of child healthcare utilization. The study finds strong regional variations across the country with utilization more enabled in some regions than others, under same conditions and recommends that households maintain a size they can cater for health-wise. The study recommends an all-inclusive health policy to cater for disparities across regions and the retraining of mothers since secondary education alone is requisite for child healthcare utilization.

Suggested Citation

  • Godfrey I. Ihedimma & Godwin I. Opara, 2020. "An Account of Disproportionate Child Healthcare Utilization in Nigeria," Working Papers of the African Governance and Development Institute. 20/048, African Governance and Development Institute..
    • Handle: RePEc:agd:wpaper:20/048
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.afridev.org/RePEc/agd/agd-wpaper/An-Account-of-Disproportionate-Child-Healthcare-Utilization-in-Nigeria.pdf
    File Function: Revised version, 2020
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heaton, Tim B. & Forste, Renata & Hoffmann, John P. & Flake, Dallan, 2005. "Cross-national variation in family influences on child health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 97-108, January.
    2. Rifkatu Nghargbu & Olanrewaju Olaniyan, 2017. "Inequity in Maternal and Child Health Care Utilization in Nigeria," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 29(4), pages 630-647, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Godfrey I. Ihedimma & Godwin I. Opara, 2020. "An Account of Disproportionate Child Healthcare Utilization in Nigeria," Research Africa Network Working Papers 20/048, Research Africa Network (RAN).
    2. Godfrey I. Ihedimma & Godwin I. Opara, 2020. "An Account of Disproportionate Child Healthcare Utilization in Nigeria," Working Papers 20/048, European Xtramile Centre of African Studies (EXCAS).
    3. Kinyondo, Abel Alfred & Ntegwa, Magashi Joseph & Masawe, Cresencia Apolinary, 2022. "Socioeconomic Inequality in Maternal Healthcare Services: The Case of Tanzania," African Journal of Economic Review, African Journal of Economic Review, vol. 10(1), January.
    4. Laurie F. DeRose & Andrés Salazar-Arango & Paúl Corcuera García & Montserrat Gas-Aixendri & Reynaldo Rivera, 2017. "Maternal union instability and childhood mortality risk in the Global South, 2010–14," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 71(2), pages 211-228, May.
    5. M. Boubacar Bathily & Omar Sene, 2021. "Décomposition des sources d'inégalité d'accès à la santé de l'enfant: Une analyse comparative de quelques pays d'Afrique Subsaharienne," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 33(2), pages 221-233, June.
    6. Hampshire, Katherine Rebecca & Panter-Brick, Catherine & Kilpatrick, Kate & Casiday, Rachel E., 2009. "Saving lives, preserving livelihoods: Understanding risk, decision-making and child health in a food crisis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(4), pages 758-765, February.
    7. Richards, Esther & Theobald, Sally & George, Asha & Kim, Julia C. & Rudert, Christiane & Jehan, Kate & Tolhurst, Rachel, 2013. "Going beyond the surface: Gendered intra-household bargaining as a social determinant of child health and nutrition in low and middle income countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 24-33.
    8. Kathryn Yount & Sarah Zureick-Brown & Nafisa Halim & Kayla LaVilla, 2014. "Fertility Decline, Girls’ Well-being, and Gender Gaps in Children’s Well-being in Poor Countries," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(2), pages 535-561, April.
    9. Regina Fuchs & Elsie Pamuk & Wolfgang Lutz, 2010. "Education or wealth: which matters more for reducing child mortality in developing countries?," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 8(1), pages 175-199.
    10. Mohamed Vadel Taleb El Hassen & Juan M. Cabases & Moulay Driss Zine Eddine El Idrissi & Samuel Mills, 2022. "Changes in Inequality in Use of Maternal Health Care Services: Evidence from Skilled Birth Attendance in Mauritania for the Period 2007–2015," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(6), pages 1-17, March.
    11. Singh, Tejendra Pratap & Yusuff, Olanrewaju, 2024. "Unlocking Health Potential: Effects of Free Maternal and Child Health Program," OSF Preprints y6wzt, Center for Open Science.
    12. Burroway, Rebekah & Hargrove, Andrew, 2018. "Education is the antidote: Individual- and community-level effects of maternal education on child immunizations in Nigeria," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 63-71.
    13. Gyimah, Stephen Obeng, 2009. "Polygynous marital structure and child survivorship in sub-Saharan Africa: Some empirical evidence from Ghana," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 334-342, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Healthcare Utilization; Logit Model; Child Healthcare; Regional Variation; Grossman;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:agd:wpaper:20/048. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Asongu Simplice (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/agdiycm.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.