Health insurance provides protection against unexpected medical expenses, mitigates financial hardship, and enhances access to healthcare services. Yet, women’s uptake of health insurance remains low in Nigeria. In contrast to previous studies on women’s health insurance coverage (WHIC), we examined the socio-spatial dimension based on nationally representative data from the Nigeria Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, 2021. Spatial statistics and binary logistic regression unmasked the geographic patterns and the predictors, respectively. WHIC was extremely low at 2.3%, with a distinct north-south divide. Nevertheless, Southwestern states: Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, and Ondo had relatively better coverage than the Northern region, especially the Northwest, where Sokoto emerged as the cold spot. We found that women with higher level of education (OR = 5.88; 95% CI = 3.94–8.77), urban dwellers (OR = 1.22; 95% CI = 1.02–1.46), young adults between 20 and 24 years (OR = 2.17; 95% CI = 1.46–3.26), and those who had access to mass media, except for internet use, were more likely to have health insurance. Conversely, married women (OR = 0.60; 95% CI = 0.46–0.79), those who lived in Northeast Nigeria (OR = 0.36; 95% CI = 0.27–0.47), and those within the poor wealth quintile (OR = 0.17; 95% CI = 0.32–0.67) were less likely to have health insurance. The study recommends policies targeting women’s socio-economic conditions to improve health insurance coverage in Nigeria considering geographic contexts.
Adeleke et al. (Fri,) studied this question.