Poverty, Household Characteristics and Child Health Care in Nigeria

Abstract

Poverty is a household name in developing countries such as Nigeria and has been recognized as a major problem inhibiting economic growth and development. As such, this study examined poverty, household characteristics and child health care in Nigeria with the aim of finding out how poverty affects child health care considering host of household characteristics. The theoretical framework is based on household utility maximization derived from the human capital analysis, while logit regression estimation technique was adopted for our analysis. Parental education influenced children health status and also positively significant in child height for age. Also, household size and economic status are also significant factors in determining child health status. The study therefore recommends that government should put in place policies to reduce the identified constraints to child health care.