SOCIO-ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF INFANT MORTALITY IN NIGERIA (1980–2017)

ABSTRACT

Infant health in Nigeria has experienced steady improvements in the last three decades; however, infant mortality rates in Nigeria remain alarmingly high. Much has to be done in order for Nigeria to achieve one of the Sustainable Development Goals (i.e. SDG 3 - target 3.2), on reducing infant and child deaths to at least below 25 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2030. The aim of the study is to examine the impact of some selected socio-economic factors on infant mortality in Nigeria. Annual time series data on total fertility rate, Female Secondary School Enrollment Ratio, adult female labour force participation rate, gross domestic product per capita, government health expenditure and carbon (II) oxide emissions spanning the period 1980-2017 was obtained from World Bank Database; International Labor Organization Database and World Health Organization Global Health Expenditure database and used to conduct an empirical investigation. The Augmented Dickey Fuller test was employed in examining the order of stationarity of the variables, after which the Engle-Granger technique of co-integration was adopted to examine the short-run and long-run relationship among the variables. Results showed that all the variables became stationary after differencing once at the 5% level. The result suggests a presence of co-integration among the variables. This is due to the stationarity of the residuals at the 5% critical value and there was also an existence of a long-run relationship among the variables. From the analysis, apart from Female Secondary School Enrollment Ratio and Government health expenditure all other variables comply with the a-priori expectations in the longrun. Total fertility rate had comparatively the highest impact of 1.376626 and 1.751467 in the shortrun and long-run respectively on infant mortality rate but was only significant in the short-run at 5% level. The Error Correction Model estimated coefficients revealed that Gross Domestic Product Per Capita made an unimpressive input in improving infant health and the decadent approach towards public health expenditure culminated to an adverse effect on infant health. All variables employed in the model had joint significance at the 5% level with the independent variables explaining 96.71% of infant mortality rate. While there was evidence of no multicollinearity among the variable, the Durbin Watson (DW) statistics showed an existence of autocorrelation. Thus government should intensify efforts in the advocacy and sensitization of women in the use of family planning services, improve fiscal attention to women’s health and ensure effective utilization of allocated resources to health.