different age groups and demographic subgroups, such as by region, state, rural-urban, north-south and gender given the data availability.<sup>6</sup> Table 1: Definitions used to identify severe deprivations from GHS and MICS datasets

|Deprivations|Definition|
|---|---|
|Severe Food Deprivation|“children whose heights [or] (...) weights for their age [or<br>weight for height] were more than –3 standard deviations<br>below the median of the international reference<br>population,that is,severe anthropometric failure”<sup>7</sup>|
|Severe Health Deprivation|“children who had not been immunised against any<br>diseases”<sup>8</sup>|
|Severe Education Deprivation|“children aged between (...) [5 and 17] who had never<br>been to school and were not currently attending school<br>(noprofessional education of anykind)”<sup>9</sup>|
|Severe Safe Drinking Water Deprivation|“children who only had access to surface water (for<br>example, rivers) for drinking or who lived in households<br>where the nearest source of water was more than 15<br>minutes away (indicators of severe deprivation of water<br>qualityorquantity)”|
|Severe Sanitation Facilities Deprivation|“children who had no access to a toilet of any kind in the<br>vicinity of their dwelling, that is, no private or communal<br>toilets or latrines”<sup>10</sup>|
|Severe Shelter Deprivation|“children in dwellings with more than five people per<br>room (severe overcrowding) or with no flooring material<br>(for example,a mud floor)”<sup>11</sup>|
|Severe Information Deprivation|“children aged between (...) [5 and 17] with no access to<br>radio,television,telephone(...)”<sup>12</sup>|

Source: Authors’ own table taking definitions provided in Gordon et al. (2013, pp.7-8), partly adjusting to Nigerian context and data availability. Age corresponds to completed years of age.

6 The level of disaggregation differs by wave and data set. Results will only be presented for sub-groups of at least 30 individuals. 7 Z-scores are calculated using Stata’s zscore06 command. This study adapts this definition following Gordon et al. (2003b) considering not joined height and weight for age, but any anthropometric failure be it stunting, wasting or underweight as severe food deprivation. Individuals with height/length for age beyond 6 standard deviations from the mean are excluded as well as those with weights for age below 6 and above 5 standard deviations from the mean and weights for height beyond 5 standard deviations, as suggested by DHS (n.d.), because these are considered implausible values.

8 The original definition by Gordon et al. (2003a) included “or young children who had a recent illness involving diarrhea and had not received any medical advice or treatment” (p.7). This analysis only considers immunizations for this deprivation as diarrhea treatment information is not coherently available across data.

9 The age range has for this analysis been adjusted from the original definition of 7-18 to the Nigerian education context. While the official school starting age is 6 years, children can start earlier, and as a large share starts at age 5 this study used 5 as starting age until age 17, considering that there are 6 years of primary and 6 years of secondary school.

10 Buckets were not considered a toilet facility.

11 Apart from mud, this incorporates earth, dung and sand.

12 The original definition included additionally newspaper as information source, which is not available in this study’s data sources. Moreover, the original definition ranged from 3-18, whereas this study applied the schooling age range. Also, household asset ownership is assumed to be a good proxy for access.

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