Evaluation of Health Inequity Status of In-School Youths in Uyo Capital Territory, Nigeria

In any emerging urban territory, there are bound to be opportunities and advancements that will create alteration in the social order leading to social and economic classes. The resultant variations in socioeconomic status among the households is a critical factor in shaping individual and family decisions especially in taking advantages of services that can improve the general wellbeing of the households in space and time. Furthermore, this variation can also influence the health status of households’ members across gender, generation and rurality. The study opted to ascertain this situation in a fast developing region in Niger Delta of Nigeria. Thus, this study evaluated health inequity status of urban youths in a Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Specifically, the demographic profiles of the respondents were analyzed, the pattern of health inequity indicants were ascertained and the pattern of index of health inequity status of the urban youths were assessed. The study was an expo facto research type and adopted a cross sectional survey design. Data were collected using a self-administered structured questionnaire. A sample size of 181 respondents were selected through multi-stage sampling procedure. Descriptive statistics including frequency count, percentage and composite index analyses were used to analyze the collected data. Findings show that majority of the respondent within the ages of 17 to 19 years and 86.7% were native of the study area. Of course 90.6% were depending on their parents for socioeconomic support as 68.0% resides in areas that were not totally classed as urban. With regards to health equity status, 40.9% of the respondents had low health equity status, 57.5% had average status and only 1.7% had high health equity status. The later findings buttress the fact that there is wide gap in health and socioeconomic wellbeing of the younger generation across the households and therefore improvement in the quality of child social protection and reduction in child poverty status.