No abstract

Fertility is one of the dynamic components of population and has been modelled through children ever born per woman, which is a count variable that can be characterized with excessive zeros origination from women without any births. In order to examine the spatial variation across states of Nigeria, we proposed the use of hurdle models that classifies the data into a truncated count and point mass of zeros. We adopt distributional regression model that allows all parameters of the hurdle model to be linked to covariates of different types so as to allow for accessing the spatial variations and nonlinear forms of metrical covariates on the level of fertility and in the likelihood of having no child. Data was sourced from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. Findings reveal the existence of north-south divide in the average level of fertility and in the likelihood of a woman not giving birth to any child. Women with higher level of education and those from richer or richest households have higher likelihood of having no child, but this is not the case for women with primary or secondary education, users of traditional or modern contraceptive, ever-married women and those working. There is therefore the need to strengthen family planning policies so that investment in contraceptive would yield the expected results in Nigeria.

No abstract

The practice of open defecation has persistently remained high in Nigeria despite the grave danger it poses to public and environmental health, and the several intervention programs put in place over the years to curtail the ugly practice. This study quantifies the space and time trends in open defecation practice in Nigeria with the aim of highlighting the changes that have taken place at various locations in Nigeria over a fifteen-year period. A Bayesian spatio-temporal model was applied to cross-section data obtained from the

The practice of open defecation has persistently remained high in Nigeria despite the grave danger it poses to public and environmental health, and the several intervention programs put in place over the years to curtail the ugly practice. This study quantifies the space and time trends in open defecation practice in Nigeria with the aim of highlighting the changes that have taken place at various locations in Nigeria over a fifteen-year period. A Bayesian spatio-temporal model was applied to cross-section data obtained from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 2003, 2008, 2013, and 2018, and inference was based on integrated nested Laplace approximation technique. The findings indicate a north-south spatio-temporal patterns that are similar among the rural and urban dwellers. States such as Kwara, Kogi, Oyo, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti, Enugu, and Ebonyi all of which are neighbors to each other are among those with persistent high prevalence of open defecation in the country. Given the diversity of the Nigerian population groups within the states, a more understanding of the socio-cultural standard of the different communities would be required to implement policies that recognize opportunities to explore, while being culturally responsive to community needs in ending open defecation in Nigeria.