Close to half of all children under five years of age in the Northeast and Northwest geopolitical zones were estimated to be stunted in their growth for their age in 2013, compared to 22 percent in the rest of Nigeria. To better understand the drivers of chronic child undernutrition in northern Nigeria and how those drivers differ from other areas of the country, an econometric analysis was done of data from the 2008 and 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys. The quantitative analyses focused on children aged 6 to 23 months. A standard child-level regression based approach was used for the first part of the analysis using as the dependent variable whether the child is stunted (height-for-age z-score (HAZ) < -2.0). The analysis then was extended by comparing the model for northern Nigeria in 2013 to other areas of Nigeria in 2013 to decompose differences between the models.