Food insecurity, environment, institutional quality, and health outcomes: evidence from South Asia.

BACKGROUND: Food insecurity and environmental degradation pose significant threats to health outcomes in South Asia, necessitating effective policy interventions. Therefore, this study aims to examine the impact of food insecurity and environmental degradation on health outcome indicators amidst global inflationary shocks and institutional quality arrangements. Additionally, it aims to explore the intricate moderating role of institutional quality on the relationship between food insecurity, endogenous variables, and external shocks. METHOD: In alignment with the study's objectives, a set of panel data spanning from 2000 to 2021 is compiled for South Asia. The study introduces a novel variable representing inflationary shock, crafted through the integration of inflation datapoints and the application of the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model. Additionally, a distinctive aggregate institutional quality index is formulated, drawing from six key measures of the Worldwide Governance indicators. To scrutinize the effects of food insecurity, environmental degradation, and other explanatory variables, the study employs the two-step system generalized method of moment technique, offering a robust analytical approach to uncover complex relationships and dynamics in the region. RESULTS: The results indicate that the prevalence of undernourishment, inequality in per capita calorie intake, and CO2 emissions significantly reduce life expectancy and increase mortality rates. Additionally, it shows that per capita kilocalorie supply, per capita GDP, per capita health expenditures, and urbanization are statistically significant for increasing life expectancy and decreasing mortality rates. The findings reveal that inflationary shocks severely affect food insecurity and environmental factors, exerting further pressure on contemporary life expectancy and mortality rates. In rebuttal, the institutional quality index is found to have significant effects on increasing and decreasing life expectancy and mortality rates, respectively. Furthermore, the institutional quality index is effective in moderating the nexus between food insecurity, environmental degradation, and health outcomes while also neutralizing the negative impact of inflationary shocks on the subject. CONCLUSION: The results verify triple health constraints such as food insecurity, environmental factors, and economic vulnerability to global shocks, which impose severe effects on life expectancy and mortality rates. Furthermore, poor institutional quality is identified as a hindrance to health outcomes in South Asia. The findings suggest specific policy implications that are explicitly discussed.

An environmental perspective of energy consumption, overpopulation, and human capital barriers in South Asia.

Prior literature is substantive in highlighting the nexus between pollutant and socio-economic predictors; however, the role of human interaction has not been sufficiently explored. Thus, the present study examines the validity of the environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the presence of energy consumption, overpopulation, and human capital index in five South Asian countries. It employs fixed effects, random effects, and dynamic panel causality techniques with a set of panel data from 1972 to 2021. The baseline results validate the existence of the EKC hypothesis in the recipient panel. Nevertheless, the findings reveal that energy consumption and population density have positive effects, while human capital has negative impacts on CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the study observes that energy consumption and per capita GDP have a significant causal link with CO2 emissions, whereas CO2 emissions are evident to have causality with population density and human capital index. The results are robust and suggest that the consolidation of an effective regulatory framework and technological improvements are substantial measures to improve environmental quality in South Asia. Moreover, allocating sufficient resources to uplift contemporary educational and health status would be imperative to improving environmental quality as aspired to by the Paris Agreement.

Socioeconomic inequalities in child and adolescent mental health in Australia: the role of parenting style and parents' relationships.

BACKGROUND: Socioeconomic inequalities in health and their determinants have been studied extensively over the past few decades. However, the role of parenting style and parents' couple relationships in explaining mental health inequalities is limited. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the distributional impact of parenting style (angry parenting, consistent parenting, and inductive parenting) and parents' couple relationships (e.g., argumentative, happy relationships) on socioeconomic inequalities and by extension on mental health status of Australian children and adolescents. METHODS: This study utilized data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (Waves 1-7), specifically focusing on intact biological parent families, while excluding single-parent and blended-family households. We applied the decomposition index and the Blinder Oaxaca method to investigate the extent of the contribution and temporal impact of parenting style and parents' couple relationships on the mental health status of Australian children and adolescents. RESULTS: This study revealed that poor parenting style is the single most important factor that leads to developing mental health difficulties in children and adolescents, especially from low socioeconomic status, and it contributes almost 52% to socioeconomic inequalities in mental health status. Conversely, household income, maternal education, employment status, and parents' couple relationships contributed 28.04%, 10.67%, 9.28%, and 3.34%, respectively, to mental health inequalities in children and adolescents. CONCLUSION: Overall, this study underscores the importance of parenting style and parents' couple relationships as significant predictors of mental health outcomes in children and adolescents. These results highlight the need for targeted interventions to support families from low socioeconomic backgrounds to address the significant mental health inequalities observed in the study population.

The effect of financial development on environmental quality: a developing country evidence.

Financial development is vital to enhance the inclusive growth of a country in the modern world, and environmental quality, affected by financial development, is also a highly debated topic. Thus, this study attempts to investigate the role of financial development in determining environmental quality in Sri Lanka considering other variables namely economic growth, energy consumption, trade openness, and foreign direct investments. The key econometric tool used for the purpose is the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach with the data from 1992 to 2021. As per the findings, financial development, economic growth, energy consumption, and foreign direct investments adversely impact environmental quality both in the long-run and short-run. Additionally, trade openness established a negative impact in the short-run only. Importantly, the Environmental Kuznets' Curve (EKC) hypothesis and Pollution Haven Hypothesis are established. Finally, all variables except trade openness confirmed a unidirectional causal relationship with environmental quality. This study recommends that all the modelled variables are vital to enrich the environmental quality in Sri Lanka.

Disaggregated energy consumption, industrialization, total population, and ecological footprint nexus: evidence from the world's top 10 most populous countries.

High population, energy consumption, industrialization, and environmental degradation are inherently linked, making the study of ecological footprints in the most populous countries crucial for understanding their environmental impact and guiding efforts to minimize ecological degradation through sustainable resource management and conservation. Therefore, this study examines the effects of disaggregated energy consumption, industrialization, and total population on the ecological footprint of the world's top 10 most populous countries namely Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, and the USA, using data for the period of 1990-2020. The research employs Kao and Pedroni techniques of cointegration to determine whether the variables are cointegrated in the long run. The long-term equilibrium association is measured utilizing panel autoregressive distributed lag/pooled mean group (ARDL/PMG), and method of moment quantile (MMQ) regression methods. Furthermore, to test for the causal relationships between the selected variables, we used the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (D-H) panel causality method. The findings of the study reveal that renewable energy consumption, as well as GDP square, have a significant negative influence on ecological footprint, implying that renewable energy and GDP square reduce ecological footprint and thus enhance environmental quality. Furthermore, non-renewable energy, industrialization, total population, and GDP have a detrimental impact on environmental quality by increasing ecological footprint. It is also found that there is a one-way causality from non-renewable energy and industrialization to ecological footprint and a bidirectional causal relationship between ecological footprint and total population, GDP, and GDP2. Important policy implications are drawn based on the findings.

A global perspective on the governance-health nexus.

BACKGROUND: This study raises two key arguments: First, government health expenditure (GHE) and per capita out-of-pocket expenditures on healthcare (OPEH) are sensitive to contemporary good governance practices, giving policy importance to the exogeneity of healthcare determinants, i.e., governance for health rather than health governance. Second, it is the income level of countries that reflects the volatility of the governance spillovers on the subject. METHODS: The present study constructs a composite governance index (CGI) and employs a set of panel data for 144 countries over the period from 2002 to 2020. To allow comparability and extract specific policy implications, the countries are classified as full, high-, middle-, and low-income panels. Meanwhile to delve into the short- and long-run effects of CGI on GHE and OPEH, the study employs the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) model. Further, to establish a causal link between the variables, it uses the Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality technique. RESULTS: The results indicate that CGI is significantly cointegrated with GHE and OPEH in all recipient panels. It indicates that while CGI has significantly positive impacts on GHE and OPEH, its effects vary according to the income level of the underlying economies. The findings support the idea of governance for health and show that CGI drives the stabilization and enhancement of GHE and OPEH in the long run. Furthermore, the findings reveal that economic growth, the age dependency ratio, and tax revenue have positive effects, while the crude death rate and the child mortality rate exert negative impacts on the subject. Finally, the results highlight a unidirectional causality running from CGI to GHE and OPEH, while no feedback response is evident. CONCLUSIONS: Although an increase in GHE and OPEH is associated with the improvement of the population's healthcare, the results suggest the recognition of the importance and institutionalization of good governance to streamline this improvement through effective channelization, outreach, and social environment development for extensive health inclusion.

Socioeconomic status and health behavior in children and adolescents: a systematic literature review.

Socioeconomic status affects individuals' health behaviors and contributes to a complex relationship between health and development. Due to this complexity, the relationship between SES and health behaviors is not yet fully understood. This literature review, therefore, aims to assess the association between socioeconomic status and health behaviors in childhood and adolescence. Preferred Reporting for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis protocol guidelines were used to conduct a systematic literature review. The electronic online databases EBSCO Host, PubMed, Web of Science, and Science Direct were utilized to systematically search published articles. The Joanna Briggs Institute's critical appeal tool was used to assess the quality of included studies. Eligibility criteria such as study context, study participants, study setting, outcome measures, and key findings were used to identify relevant literature that measured the association between socioeconomic status and health behaviors. Out of 2,391 studies, only 46 met the final eligibility criteria and were assessed in this study. Our review found that children and adolescents with low socioeconomic status face an elevated risk of unhealthy behaviors (e.g., early initiation of smoking, high-energy-dense food, low physical activity, and involvement in drug abuse), in contrast to their counterparts. Conversely, children and adolescents from higher socioeconomic backgrounds exhibit a higher prevalence of health-promoting behaviors, such as increased consumption of fruit and vegetables, dairy products, regular breakfast, adherence to a nutritious diet, and engagement in an active lifestyle. The findings of this study underscore the necessity of implementing specific intervention measures aimed at providing assistance to families from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds to mitigate the substantial disparities in health behavior outcomes in children and adolescents.

Financial development and environmental quality in developed countries: a systematic literature review.

Studying the effect of financial development on environmental quality has become imperative in the modern world due to the climate change challenges. Hence, this systematic literature review provides a comprehensive overview of the existing body of knowledge on the nexus of financial development and environmental quality in developed countries. Three databases: Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar were used to search the relevant articles in this domain. Finally, 20 journal articles qualified for the systematic literature review based on the pre-defined article inclusion criteria as per the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) framework. We found that a range of econometric approaches were used in all examined papers, employing a diverse range of proxy variables to model the relationship between financial development and environmental quality. Overall, the findings of the examined papers imply mixed evidence of this nexus in developed countries. We highlight the knowledge gap in this research domain examining the financial development and environmental quality link from different proxies.

Are environmental damage and export concentration the major threats for the long-run economic growth in Bangladesh?

Using World Bank and IMF data over the period 1990-2018, this research explores the determinants of economic growth in Bangladesh with particular attention to environmental degradation and export concentration variables. An ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) bound testing approach is employed as an estimation strategy with FMOLS (Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares) and CCR (Canonical Cointegrating Regression) for cross-checking the results. The obtained results confirm that CO2 emissions, consumption expenditure, export concentration, remittances, and inflation are the main driving forces for the long-run economic growth in Bangladesh where the effects of the first two variables and the last three variables are positive and negative, respectively. The study also reveals the dynamic short-run relationships among the chosen variables. Environmental pollution and export concentration are found to be the barriers to economic growth; therefore, the country should take necessary steps to mitigate this problem for ensuring long-run sustainable economic development.

Investigating the prospect of cleaner production in informal enterprises: A scientific assessment of environmental burdens and economic efficiency.

The present study aims to assess the prospects for cleaner production (CP) and sustainable development (SD) of informally operated small manufacturing enterprises, which are frequently blamed for uncontrolled waste disposal and causing pollution to the environment. The economic efficiency level of these firms has been explored to this end, and the metallic pollution loads in the surrounding environment have been scientifically analyzed to investigate the nexus between these two. DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis)-Tobit analysis has been employed, and a pollution load index (PLI) of heavy metal pollution comprising two environmental compartments (soil and water) has been constructed based on the concentration level of metalloid pollutants in the samples collected from the surrounding areas of the studied informal firms in Bangladesh. The study disproves CP practice in majority of the informal firms in Bangladesh by observing a positive relationship between firm-level efficiency and pollution load sourced from their production activities. Afterwards, this study estimates the eco-efficiency level of firms by considering pollution load as an undesirable output and minimizing its impact in an input-oriented DEA model. Applying the eco-efficiency scores in censored Tobit regression analysis, the outcome endorses the prospect of CP for informally operated enterprises in Bangladesh. However, the CP prospect can only materialize if and only if firms are provided with adequate technical, financial, and strategic support for achieving eco-efficiency in their production. The informal and marginal nature of the studied firms restricts them from getting access to the facilities and support services needed for implementing CP and moving towards sustainable manufacturing. Therefore, this study recommends green practices in informal manufacturing and limiting the informal firms by bringing them gradually under the coverage of formalization, which is in line with the achievement of the targets mentioned in Sustainable Development Goal 8.

The health consequences of civil wars: evidence from Afghanistan.

This study examines the effects of long-run civil wars on healthcare, which is an important component of human capital development and their causality nexus in Afghanistan using the MVAR (modified vector autoregressive) approach and the Granger non-causality model covering data period 2002Q3-2020Q4. The primary results support a significant long-run relationship between variables, while the results of the MVAR model indicate the per capita cost of war, per capita GDP, and age dependency ratio have significantly positive impacts on per capita health expenditures, whereas child mortality rate and crude death rate have negative impacts. The results of the Granger non-causality approach demonstrate that there is a statistically significant bidirectional causality nexus between per capita health expenditure, per capita cost of war, per capita GDP, child mortality rate, crude death rate, and age dependency ratio, while it also supports the existence of strong and significant interconnectivity and multidimensionality between per capita cost of war and per capita health expenditure, with a significantly strong feedback response from the control variables. Important policy implications sourced from the key findings are also discussed.

The Role of Socio-economic and Female Indicators on Child Mortality Rate in Bangladesh: A Time Series Analysis.

This study aims to identify the role of socio-economic and female indicators on child mortality in Bangladesh from the data of 1975 - 2019. A number of econometric techniques of time series analysis like Augmented Dickey-Fuller, Autoregressive Distributive Lag bounds and pair-wise Granger causality tests have been applied to ascertain the desired outcomes. The Augmented Dickey-Fuller test has confirmed that neither series is integrated at level two and the Autoregressive Distributive Lag bounds testing approach has shown the cointegration and short-run and long-run relationship between the variables. Total fertility rate and urbanization have a positive effect, and female education, female life expectancy at birth, and economic growth rate have a negative effect on the child mortality rate. The pair-wise Granger causality test has shown the unidirectional and bidirectional causal relationship among the studied variables. All the outcomes are theoretically consistent and the policy recommendations are made based on findings.

Socioeconomic inequalities in teenage pregnancy in Nigeria: evidence from Demographic Health Survey.

BACKGROUND: Despite the high rate of teenage pregnancy in Nigeria and host of negative medical, social and economic consequences that are associated with the problem, relatively few studies have examined socioeconomic inequality in teenage pregnancy. Understanding the key factors associated with socioeconomic inequality in teenage pregnancy is essential in designing effective policies for teenage pregnancy reduction. This study focuses on measuring inequality and identifying factors explaining socioeconomic inequality in teenage pregnancy in Nigeria. METHODS: This is a cross sectional study using individual recode (data) file from the 2018 Nigeria Demographic Health Survey. The dataset comprises a representative sample of 8,423 women of reproductive age 15 - 19 years in Nigeria. The normalized Concentration index (Cn) was used to determine the magnitude of inequalities in teenage pregnancy. The Cn was decomposed to determine the contribution of explanatory factors to socioeconomic inequalities in teenage pregnancy in Nigeria. RESULTS: The negative value of the Cn (-0.354; 95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.400 to -0.308) suggests that pregnancy is more concentrated among the poor teenagers. The decomposition analysis identified marital status, wealth index of households, exposure to information and communication technology, and religion as the most important predictors contributing to observed concentration of teenage pregnancy in Nigeria. CONCLUSION: There is a need for targeted intervention to reduce teenage pregnancy among low socioeconomic status women in Nigeria. The intervention should break the intergenerational cycle of low socioeconomic status that make teenagers' susceptible to unintended pregnancy. Economic empowerment is recommended, as empowered girls are better prepared to handle reproductive health issues. Moreover, religious bodies, parents and schools should provide counselling, and guidance that will promote positive reproductive and sexual health behaviours to teenagers.

Assessing the asymmetric war-growth nexus: A case of Afghanistan.

This study explores the war-growth nexus in Afghanistan, a country where war-torn acts inform resource allocation. Employing the asymmetric ARDL, dynamic multipliers, and asymmetric causality techniques, the initial results confirm the existence of a long-run asymmetric nexus amid predictors. The asymmetric ARDL results indicate that a positive asymmetric shock from the per capita cost of war reduces per capita GDP-that is, economic growth-while a negative asymmetric shock from the per capita cost of war increases growth in the short and long run. Moreover, the findings reveal that per capita capital investment, per capita energy consumption, per capita household consumption, per capita remittance, per capita foreign direct investment, population growth, and inflation rate have significantly asymmetric effects on growth, highlighting non-monotonic impacts in scale and magnitude. The results of the asymmetric causality technique by bootstrap confirm that there is an asymmetric bidirectional causality between growth, per capita cost of war, per capita household consumption, per capita capital investment, and per capita foreign direct investment, while expanding only unidirectional causality with per capita remittance, population growth, and inflation rate. Based on the findings, the study concludes by offering relevant policy recommendations.

Effects of globalization, energy consumption and ICT on health status in Australia: the role of financial development and education.

BACKGROUND: The outbreak of COVID-19 has alerted governments around the world, including Australia, to think seriously about the health issues. Life expectancy is one of such issues. Therefore, this study tries to reveal the effects of globalization, energy consumption, information and communication technology, financial development, education rate, and economic growth on life expectancy at birth in Australia. METHODS: Using the data period of 1990-2018, a series of econometric techniques: the Dickey-Fuller generalized least square test, Autoregressive Distributive Lag bounds test, fully modified ordinary least square method and the pairwise Granger causality test, are applied. RESULTS: The findings disclose that globalization, renewable energy use, information and communication technology, per capita gross domestic product, education rate, and financial development increased during this period but non-renewable energy use reduced life expectancy at birth. Unidirectional causal associations of the studied variables with life expectancy at birth are also revealed. CONCLUSIONS: All the outcomes are relevant and useful for articulating an innovative policy in the health sector. The prime policy implication of this work is: the effective, efficient, and inclusive policies considering globalization, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, information and communication technology, financial development, education rate, and economic growth should be formulated and executed for guaranteeing health status.

The role of tourism in service sector employment: Do market capital, financial development and trade also play a role?

Workers' living standards have recently deteriorated in the service sector throughout the world, although a few decades ago, service was among the fastest growing sectors in industrialised nations. However, in recent years, in service sectors tourism especially has been drying up. This paper examines the symmetric and asymmetric effects of tourism, market capital, financial development, and trade on service sector employment in Australia from the period 1991-2019. The results of the cointegration tests, notably the ARDL and NARDL bound tests, reveal that the variables are related in the long run. The positive effect of tourist arrival on service sector employment in Australia is confirmed by long-run estimates from both ARDL and NARDL approaches. Similarly, both approaches also confirm the long-run positive relation of financial development. However, while ARDL shows long-run negative and positive associations of market capital and trade, respectively, the opposite is found in the case of the NARDL approach. As a result, policy proposals like planning and initiating tools for ensuring consistent international arrivals and easing of entry requirements have been recommended by this study to assist Australia in enhancing service sector employment, thus promoting economic development.

Socio-economic factors affecting high infant and child mortality rates in selected African countries: does globalisation play any role?

BACKGROUND: Despite the declining trends worldwide, infant and child mortality rates are still high in many African countries. These high rates are problematic; therefore, this study attempts to explore the contributing factors that cause high infant and child mortality rates in 14 African countries using panel data for the period of 2000-2018. In particular, the role globalisation is explored. METHODS: The panel corrected standard error (PCSE), the Feasible generalized least square (FGLS) models, and the pair-wise Granger causality test have been applied as methodological approaches. RESULTS: The public health expenditure, numbers of physicians, globalization, economic development, education, good governance, and HIV prevalence rate have been revealed as the determinants of infant and child mortality in these countries. All these variables except the HIV prevalence rate negatively affect the infant and child mortality rates, while the HIV prevalence rate is found to be positive. Bidirectional and unidirectional causal relationships between the variables are also attained. CONCLUSIONS: Effective socio-economic policy priority with due consideration of globalization should be emphasized to reduce infant and child mortality rates in these countries.

Is Tanzania's economic growth leaving the poor behind? A nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag assessment.

Most developing economies have recently experienced significant economic growth without corresponding substantial poverty reduction and improved population wellbeing. This paper uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model to explore the growth-poverty relationship in Tanzania using annual time series data on per capita consumption expenditure, real GDP, GINI index, and unemployment from 1991-2020. To explore the causality among the variables and long-run asymmetry between per capita consumption expenditure and economic growth, the study employs Granger causality and Wild test respectively. The results confirm the presence of long and short-run asymmetric behavior of economic growth. Besides, in the short-run, the Granger causality test supported the feedback hypothesis between economic growth and consumption expenditure, and the unidirectional hypothesis from income inequality and unemployment to consumption expenditure. In the long-run, unidirectional causality was observed from consumption expenditure to both economic growth and unemployment. The study submits that while economic growth exhibits poverty reduction features, growth alone is not sufficient to alleviate poverty because the interaction of income inequality with economic growth dampens the poverty-reducing effects of economic growth. Therefore, economic growth has a significant explanation for poverty but not all about the evolution of poverty. The study opens policy perspectives with wide international relevancy as outlined in the policy implication section.

Environmental quality and its nexus with informal economy, corruption control, energy use, and socioeconomic aspects: the perspective of emerging economies.

This paper explores the impacts of informal economic activities and institutional capacity, particularly, corruption control on the environmental quality degradation of emerging economies under the prevailing socio-economic conditions and energy use patterns of the countries. The study utilizes key environmental degradation indicators: Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, ecological footprints (EFs), and Nitrous Oxide (NO) emissions, and a panel dataset of 15 emerging countries for the period 2002-2019 to undertake an empirical investigation. The pooled mean group (PMG)-ARDL estimator, Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS), Dynamic OLS (DOLS) and Augmented Mean Group (AMG) methods have been applied as empirical investigation techniques. The empirical findings reveal that in the long-run informal economic activities positively affect the environmental quality with fewer recorded emissions of CO2 and EFs while these activities affect negatively to NO emissions. This study has also found that corruption control improves environmental quality by reducing EFs and NO emissions but works to the opposite by increasing recorded CO2 emissions. An increase in economic growth and renewable energy consumption improves environmental quality in emerging countries, while consumption of non-renewable energy degrades the environmental quality. The robust empirical findings advocate policy initiatives for intense monitoring of informal activities and implementation of indirect tax policy to regulate informal activities and the pollution they cause. Careful measures of corruption control and initiatives to bring the informal economic activities into a formal framework are suggested to reduce CO2 and NO emissions. An increase in economic growth with more focus on renewables and phasing out non-renewables can ensure green growth in emerging countries.

Geographic and socioeconomic inequalities in the survival of children under-five in Nigeria.

Despite a substantial decline in child mortality globally, the high rate of under-five mortality in Nigeria is still one of the main public health concerns. This study investigates inequalities in geographic and socioeconomic factors influencing survival time of children under-five in Nigeria. This is a retrospective cross-sectional quantitative study design that used the latest Nigeria Demographic Health Survey (2018). Kaplan-Meier survival estimates, Log-rank test statistics, and the Cox proportional hazards were used to assess the geographic and socioeconomic differences in the survival of children under-five in Nigeria. The Kaplan-Meier survival estimates show most under-five mortality occur within 12 months after birth with the poorest families most at risk of under-five mortality while the richest families are the least affected across the geographic zones and household wealth index quintiles. The Cox proportional hazard regression model results indicate that children born to fathers with no formal education (HR: 1.360; 95% CI 1.133-1.631), primary education (HR: 1.279; 95% CI 1.056-1.550) and secondary education (HR: 1.204; 95% CI 1.020-1.421) had higher risk of under-five mortality compared to children born to fathers with tertiary education. Moreover, under-five mortality was higher in children born to mothers' age ≤ 19 at first birth (HR: 1.144; 95% CI 1.041-1.258). Of the six geopolitical zones, children born to mothers living in the North-West region of Nigeria had 63.4% (HR 1.634; 95% CI 1.238-2.156) higher risk of under-five mortality than children born to mothers in the South West region of Nigeria. There is a need to focus intervention on the critical survival time of 12 months after birth for the under-five mortality reduction. Increased formal education and target interventions in geopolitical zones especially the North West, North East and North Central are vital towards achieving reduction of under-five mortality in Nigeria.