Background: Promoting birth certification is instrumental to achieving target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals: legal identity for all by 2030. Currently, the birth certification rates are very low: on average, only 16.6% of children under-five years have their births certified.
Methods: Using the nationally representative Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey, this paper analyzes the socioeconomic and demographic factors associated with the birth certification of children under-five years. The relationship with these factors and birth certification were analyzed using robust econometric techniques – ordinary least squares and multilevel regression approaches.
Results: The study finds that access to health services, parental education and household wealth strongly influence birth certification. Conversely, distance to registration center, higher birth orders, longer birth intervals and father’s working status are significant obstacles to birth certification. Finally, child age, maternal age at birth and father age have non-linear effects on birth certification among children under-five years in Nigeria. I find no significant effects of gender on birth certification.
Conclusions: Improving access to health services and anchoring birth certification on child-targeted conditional cash transfer programs could be significant policy instruments for increasing birth certification in Nigeria.