The research paper will focus on the comparison between Nigeria and the United States (US). The demographic and health indicators will be examined. Two totally different countries, with different political systems, history, values, geography and political system have some similar indicators and others totally different. In the demography indicators more attention will be given to some of the sub indicators such as annual population growth, composition of the population and the dependency ratio. Inside the health indicator the focus will be on the life expectancy at birth, mortality rate and health care systems. The research question of this paper is what factors are contributing to the differences regarding the demographic and health indicators in the observed countries?
Demographic data based on the World Bank show that annual population growth in Nigeria between 2011 and 2014 was 2.7%. On the other hand the United States where the annual population growth between 2011 and 2013 was 0.8 % and has fallen in 2014 to 0.7%. The annual population growth differs a lot (World Bank). The rate of growth can normally be explained by economic factors such as development. It has been statistically proven that in developing countries smaller growth of population is recorded in comparison with the countries still in development. Nigeria has been ranked based on data from the World Bank among seven countries with the fastest annual growth rate of population. We can conclude that the US is more developed than Nigeria. Education also plays an important role, since in countries with lower education, the natality is bigger. In some countries also religion and belief have an influence.
Composition of the population differs, but the overall age structure is similar. In Nigeria 43% of the population are younger than 15 years, 19% younger than 25 years and only 7% of the population are older than 25 years (CIA World Factbook). In US, 19% of the population are younger than 15, 14% younger than 25, 40% are younger than 55, and 12% are younger than 65, and around 15% of population being older than 65 (CIA World Factbook). We can see that in Nigeria because of lower life expectancy not a big % of the population reach similar age as in the US. The difference is also because of different annual rate of population and because of the basic health and social conditions.
Next demographic indicator that shows conditions in the country is total dependency ration, which measures an age-population ration of those that are not in the labor force. Ration measures the pressure on productive population. In Nigeria the ratio is very high, ranking 87.7% and among those %, 87% is youth dependency (CIA World Factbook). The situation is different in the US where the ration is lower and reached 50.9%. Among those 28.6% are the youth and 22% are the elderly (CIA World Factbook).
Another important health and demographic indicator is mortality. The mortality rate below 5 is an indicator that shows “probability per 1.000 newborn babies that will die before reaching age five” (World Bank). In Nigeria it is very high and it has reached 109 in 2015 in comparison to the United States where it reached in the same year 7. Situation in Nigeria has been improving over the years. To look at the broader picture, mortality rate shows probability of dying of a 15 year old before reaching 60. At Nigeria mortality rate per 1000 adults was around 349-281 and it differs based on the gender. The mortality rate was higher among males because of hard working conditions and waging wars. In the United States the mortality rate was not measured by World Bank probably because it is close to zero. It can be seen from the data that with a lot of western developed countries this indicator was left blank. The reason for the high mortality rate goes to underdevelopment, hunger, violence and hunger. The reason can be found also in Nigeria low 3.9 % of GDP spent for health expenditure in comparison with the United States that spends 17% (World Bank). The mortality rate in Nigeria is especially high among pregnant woman and woman giving birth, where per 100.999 live births, 814 of the mothers died in 2014 (World Bank). In the United States the number was 14 for the same year. In the United States, there are no particular groups that would be the most affected. A difference that contributes to the mortality rate is basic health care systems, more doctors, and better equipment and education. It is hard to say based on the basic data which group in the country profits more from the health care system. In order to answer that further research is needed.
Life expectancy at birth in 2014 in Nigeria was 53 for female and 52 for males and in the United States 81 for females and 79 for males (World Bank). It measures the average number of years to be lived. From this we can see that quality of life differ a lot in comparing the two countries. In the quality of life and life expectancy also a health care system and provision of basic human needs plays an important role.
If I were the healthcare official seeing this data for the first time I would have many additional questions, regarding the overall situation in the country from politics to social laws that affect the health care sector, system, and society, what type of health care systems exist, how many doctors are in the country per citizens, how available are medical treatment and medicines, what are the costs of the medicine just to mention some. The assumption is that health care in countries is a result of broader social, political, economic, cultural, geographical and demographic factors which all need to be taken into account when comparing two countries and making assumptions.
References:
World Bank. Retrieved from: http://data.worldbank.org/
CIA World Factbook. Nigeria. Retrieved from:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ni.html
CIA World Factbook. United States. Retrieved from:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
