Background and Objective:
Maternal factors that influence child health outcomes have been extensively studied worldwide and within the Nigerian context. However, there is seemingly little research about the role of paternal factors, knowing that men are culturally situated to influence health-related decision-making in a typical Nigerian household. Therefore, we conjectured that the inequality and stagnated improvement in the child health indices of Nigeria may be partially attributable to unexplored male-specific factors. Hence, this study examined child mortality variations across socio-cultural contexts in Nigeria and explored the determining effect of the socioeconomic position (SEP) of men.

Methods:
Randomly sampled, nationally representative data from 14,000 households, collected between August and December 2018 in the context of the periodic Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) were analysed. A normalized SEP variable suited to the context and research question was generated as a composite index of the weighted measures of the respondent’s age, education, occupation, employment status and household wealth-index quintile. Bivariate analyses and multiple regression models of the hazard of child mortality associated with the dichotomized SEP status were conducted.

Results:
Of the 13,311 eligible men aged 15-59years, preliminary findings showed a child under 5-years old was 43 times more likely to die when a man heads the household compared to when a woman did. The crude propensity of an under-five child death was 1.67 times higher in households with men of high SEP compared with those with low SEP.

Conclusion:
Findings reveal a significant predictive power of men’s SEP on child mortality in Nigeria and underscore the need to explore socio-cultural factors associated with men in household health outcomes analysis, as this will improve the overall understanding of the influence of men on the well-being of their families in culturally diverse settings.