SOCIOECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINANTS OF ACCESS TO SAFE DRINKING WATER IN NIGERIA: A MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATION APPROACH FOR THE CASE OF NORTHEASTERN STATES
Keywords:
Economic status, Environmental factors, Households, Access, Safe drinking water, Northeast.Abstract
This study investigates socioeconomic and environmental determinants of households’ access
to safe drinking water in Nigeria using data from the 2024-NDHS for the Northeastern region.
The population comprises 5977 households surveyed across the six Northeastern states, and of
these, 2310 households were reported to have no access to safe drinking water, thereby
constituting the event of interest for this study. Also, Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE)
is used to estimate parameters that best fit the observed data within the framework of the
binomial logistic regression model. The findings revealed that economic status has a positive
and significant influence, such that as households’ economic status rises, access to safe
drinking water also improves. Similarly, households located in urban centers are, on average,
three times more likely to have access to safe drinking water than their rural counterparts. The
results further revealed that households whose water source is located outside are nearly six
times more likely to have access to safe drinking water compared to those who have water on
premises. However, the level of education reveals a negative and statistically significant
relationship with safe water access, indicating that households with higher education are less
likely to have access compared to those with no education which sharply contradicted the a
priori expectation of this study. Finally, households whose water source is located outside are
nearly six times more likely to have access to safe drinking water compared to those who have
water on premises. Hence, the study recommends for reduction of financial barriers for low
income households by government as well as integrating government’s policy focus on ‘access’
with ‘quality assurance’ when making effort to expand safe water points closer to underserved
communities.
