Sociodemographic Factors Breastfeeding Practices and Infant Mortality in Northern Nigeria

Master's Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Sociology - Gender Studies grade: 4.0 Obafemi Awolowo University (Faculty of Social Sciences) course: Demography and Social Statistics language: English abstract: This study assessed the pattern of breastfeeding practices among mothers; and determined the relationship between women's socio-demographic characteristics and their breastfeeding practices in Northern Nigeria; examined the relationship between women's socio-demographic characteristics and infant mortality and ascertained the relationship between breastfeeding practices and infant mortality. The study employed both primary and secondary sources of data collection. Forty in-depth interviews (IDIs) were conducted in four randomly selected states. Plateau and Kaduna states were selected from North Central and North West respectively. Ten IDIs were carried out in each of these four states. Five IDIs were conducted in randomly selected rural and urban areas of each of these four states. Content analysis was employed to analyse responses from IDIs. The secondary data for the study were obtained from the Nigeria Demographic Health Surveys (NDHS 2008). The Survey elicited information from 33385 women of reproductive age between 15 and 49 years as well as information from 28647 children whose ages were below five years. The 2008 NDHS data on women of reproductive age between 15 and 49 years in Northern Nigeria who have had at least a child in the past five years preceding the survey were extracted for 12210. The 2008 NDHS Data on children of age below five years old in the North of Nigeria were extracted for 19552. The secondary data were analysed using frequency distribution chi-square test binary logistic and cox regression statistics. The results on the pattern of breastfeeding practices among mothers showed that complementary breastfeeding was more practiced among mothers who were dwelling in the urban areas than mothers that were residing in the