DOES ECONOMIC STATUS INFLUENCE LIFE-TIME RISK OF MATERNAL DEATH? AN ANALYSIS OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM NIGERIA
Haruna Usman Modibbo and Umar Usman Abubakar
Volume 13 Issue 2
Abstract
This study investigates the extent to which economic status influences life-time risk among women of reproductive age in Nigeria using time series data from 1990 to 2024. Real GDP per capita is used as a proxy for economic status, whereas life time risk of maternal mortality is measured as the probability that a 15-year-old female will die eventually from a maternal cause assuming that current levels of fertility and mortality do not change in the future taking into account competing causes of death. The study employed autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and Johansen cointegration techniques to examine both the short-run and long-run impact as well as VAR Granger Causality/Block Exogeneity Wald Test to analyse the direction of causality. The results revealed that economic status has negative and statistically significant impact on life-time risk of maternal death in Nigeria such that a percentage increase in the economic status reduces maternal death by about 0.173533%. Also, the result of causality test indicates the existence of unidirectional causality from economic status to life-time risk of maternal mortality implying that past values of economic status contain useful information for predicting the risk of maternal mortality in Nigeria. This implies that higher economic status contributes to better maternal health outcomes by reducing the number of maternal deaths. The study therefore, recommends prioritizing economic empowerment of pregnant and postpartum women, particularly by linking financial support to antenatal care (ANC) and skilled birth attendance. This is addition to reducing financial barriers to maternal healthcare utilization by subsidizing or eliminating out-of-pocket payment. Key words: Economic Status, Life-Time Risk, Maternal Mortality, ARDL.
Download Paper