HOW IMPORTANT IS INCOME AND ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY TO CHILD SURVIVAL IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY?

Nigeria failed to meet the Millennium Development Goals' goal five of reducing child mortality to 55 deaths per 1000 live births by the year 2015. This ugly development happened amidst growing records of expanding average income for the economy. As a result, this study examined the impact of per capita income and environmental quality on child survival using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model approach. Theoretically, the model was predicated on a model of endogenous mortality and life expectancy. Findings show that rather than income, child survival is instead linked to immediate past period's state of health, quality of society's environmental living conditions, and HIV prevalence among the under-five. In addition, global factors were revealed to increasingly become more significantly relevant to child survival. On the basis of this the study concluded that insignificant impact of income on child survival could be explained by the high degree of income inequality which made many households unable to afford healthy living conditions and has limited access to child medical care.