Demographic and Socioeconomic Factors Associated with Under-five Mortality in Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory

Abstract

This study examined the influence of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of women of child bearing age on the survival of their under- five years children. The cross-sectional descriptive study relied on quantitative data derived from primary sources. The respondents were women aged 15-49 years selected from communities in two Area Councils of the Federal Capital Territory using a multi-stage sampling technique. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire. The demographic and socioeconomic variables analyzed include age, Level of education, marital status, occupation, average monthly income, ethnicity, religion and living with spouse/partner. The binary logistic regression was used to determine the variables that were the most predictive of under-five mortality while the Wald (Chi square) test of significance was used to analyze the significant impact of each of the independent categorical data. The findings show that the average age of the respondents was 31.3 years with 39.0% of the mothers having experienced under-five mortality. The bivariate analysis of the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the mothers who experienced under-five mortality shows a no statistical dependency between mothers’ ethnic group, religion, marital status and under-five mortality. However, the analysis shows under-five mortality is dependent on women’s level of education with a p-value 0.759 > 0.005 (95%) and occupation with a p value 0.064 > 0.05 (95%) CI. The study concluded that the prevalence of under-five mortality is relatively high in the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria with Mother’s educational attainment, main occupation, average monthly income and ethnic group as significant predictors of under-five mortality. An improvement in girl education, provision of better maternal and child health services and employment for vulnerable mothers is recommended to boost women’s income which is a major determinant of childhood mortality in the FCT.